
Class 

Book l. JIl3- Ji_D . 

CopyrightN? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 



The Road to Happiness 



By 
Mrs. Van Koert Schuyler 



The Bible points the road to happineis 
as well ai to that of holiness 




New York 

Doublcday, Page ic Company 

1907 






Copyright, 1907, by Doubleday, Page & Company 
Published, September, 1907 



All Rights Reserved 

Including that of translation into Foreign Languages 

Including the Scandinavian 



I LIBRARY of CONGRESS 1 
Two Cooies Received 

AU6 30 190/ 

. CopyrifM Entry 

CLASS 4 XXc, No. 

/2sr&f6 

COPY 3. 



TO GIRLS ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE, FOR 

WHOM THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN AND 
TO MY SISTER— GOD BLESS HER 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. God's Letter to Us 



II. What Christmas Means to You and Me 

III. What Good Friday Means to You and Me 

IV. Why We Believe the Bible 
V. How to Get What the Bible Promises 

VI. What the Bible Promises to Prayer 

VII. Some of the Stories Jesus Told 

VIII. Cheerfulness .... 

IX. How to Read the Bible — and Enjoy It 

X. How Shall We Spend Sunday? 

XI. Love — the Test of Discipleship 

XII. Why Do We Have Trouble? . 

XIII. The Art of Living with Others 

XIV. How Shall We Observe Lent? 
XV. Praise 

XVI. Where Happiness is Found 

XVII. Sunshiny Christians 

XVIII. The Devil — A Study . 

XIX. Our Wonderful Selves 

XX. Heaven 

vn 



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311 



GOD'S LETTER TO US 




THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

CHAPTER I 

god's letter to us 

OD has written a letter to us — to 
you. And though He has employed 
different human amanuenses — that 
it may be the more readily under- 
stood — yet it comes straight from Him. In 
it, He reveals His love for us, and its chief 
object is to win our love for Him, that He may 
give us endless happiness. As it was intended 
exclusively for the inhabitants of our little world — 
individually — it has been through the ages, the 
comfort and inspiration of millions upon millions of 
our race. I want to induce you to read it. I have 
found girls most eager to appropriate any bit of 
advice about how to be acceptable to their own little 
social circle, but I want to try to lead you to find 
that which will insure your welcome in the best 

3 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

society of two worlds, here and hereafter ; with hap- 
piness thrown in by double handfuls! 

As the old negro said, "We all has our upsettin' 
sins"; they may differ, but human hearts have a 
close family resemblance, so that I may quote from 
the experience of one very faulty one in order to 
help others. 

Now God's method of communication with our 
hearts is principally through that wonderful book, 
the Bible, about which I should like to talk to you 
a little. This is not only the greatest book in the 
world — it is a whole library bound in one volume. 
It is a collection of the writings of hundreds of 
different authors living through the ages, in Egypt, 
Palestine, the desert of Arabia, Assyria, Babylon, 
Persia, Greece, and Rome. 

Glance for a moment at the list of authors on the 
front page — only an approximate one. Some were 
brought up in palaces, like Moses, the reputed heir 
to the throne of Egypt; others were country boys, 
shepherds, like Amos. Ezra was a scribe — an in- 
structor in the law. Nehemiah was the cup-bearer 
to Artaxerxes of Persia, a statesman and courtier. 

4 



GOD'S LETTER TO US 



One of his duties was to taste the wine he poured 
for the king, to secure him from poison, at his own 
risk. Isaiah was of princely rank. David and Solo- 
mon were absolute monarchs. Daniel was a prince, 
carried captive to Babylon when a child and made 
viceroy during Nebuchadnezzar's madness, when he 
believed himself to be an ox. Habakkuk was a Le- 
vite, Matthew a tax-gatherer, Luke an educated 
physician of Antioch, Peter and John were fisher- 
men, and Paul was a cultured Pharisee. Their styles 
of writing are as different as their personalities. 

Not only was this collection of books written in 
many different languages, but in different ages of 
the same language — a proof of great antiquity. 

The lapse of time between Moses and Malachi — 
for instance — changed the Hebrew into a dead lan- 
guage, understood finally only by the literati and 
the priestly class, just as Latin and Greek have be- 
come the tongues of the learned now, and the Eng- 
lish of Chaucer is understood by the few. 

The dates of the actual writing of the Bible run 
over twelve centuries. Its subject-matter — history 
and prophecy — covers the whole circuit of time. 

5 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

But in spite of its many authors, in many lands, 
separated by ages of time, there is so marvellous a 
unity that it is called "Bible," meaning "The Book." 
One thought runs through it from cover to cover — 
God. He is its hero throughout. Its theme is His 
will and love for mankind. 

There is only one explanation possible of how 
these writings should all have come together from 
such widely different sources, how type (that is, 
something that prefigures) and antitype (the real- 
ity), prophecy and fulfilment should be found, and 
bound within the same covers: that explanation is 
divine guidance in their preservation and selection. 

Its first chapters tell of the world evolving out of 

chaos, in its last we read of a new Heaven and a 

new earth, "for the former things are passed away." 

At its beginning we learn of man's sin, Satan and 

evil triumphant, a curse upon the earth, sorrow, 

sickness, death. At its close man is redeemed, Satan 

bound — "there is no more curse," no more death, 

"neither sorrow nor sighing" — and all between is 

the leading of man from condemnation to salvation. 

Is it not a wonderful book? You have made a 

6 



GOD'S LETTER TO US 



mistake if you have thought of it as dry. If you 
are interested in literature and desire the culture 
that comes of acquaintance with the world's master- 
pieces, this book is the first English classic. Every 
author ranks it first — not on the ground of spiritual 
claims, but as containing the purest English, the ut- 
most dignity, strength, and simplicity of style. All 
young authors are advised by the masters to study it 
in order to form their own style upon its models. 

Charles Reade, the novelist, calls it a literary mar- 
vel, and says that, speaking merely as an artist, the 
Acts of the Apostles eclipses all human narratives, 
and declares that Jonah is the most beautiful story 
ever written in so small a compass, containing but 
1,328 English words. He once proposed that several 
author friends should compete with him in trying to 
tell the story of Jonah with all its wealth of inci- 
dent, sufficient dialogue to carry on the action, the 
characters not stationary but growing, within the 
limits of the Bible narrative. Their failure was 
ludicrous. It is the power of condensation that de- 
clares the master. 

This same veteran author says that a written work 

7 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

loses fifty per cent, in human esteem by crossing a 
frontier or a channel. Translation lowers it ten per 
cent. Oriental poetry is but a glue of honeyed 
words, the Koran to an Occidental Christian "the 
weakest twaddle that ever drivelled from a human 
skull. It does not shock him. It is a mild emetic to 
his understanding." The Bible, an Eastern book, 
ranks first in Western thought; a product of an- 
tiquity, it is prized by modern men and women as 
their daily guide to purity and peace. 

If you are interested in what took place in this 
world, what sort of people lived and loved and 
suffered and enjoyed before our important selves 
appeared, we have here the story of the human race, 
showing us, too, by examples, how God dealt with 
it : a story which we may ponder heedf ully. Draw 
upon your picture-making faculty to enhance your 
appreciation. Take, for instance, the drama of the 
Creation. The auditorium is dark at first ; then the 
scene is suddenly illuminated, God's fiat has come, 
"Let there be light !" and then the curtain suc- 
cessively rises and falls on the six acts of the 

drama. 

8 



GOD'S LETTER TO US 



Professor Godet holds that the account of Moses 
is so like that of an eye-witness that, as he could not 
have been present at the Creation, the revelation 
must have been made to him in a vision, a typical 
day of each period made to pass before him as in a 
panorama. 

The account in Genesis is so graphic that, as you 
may know, modern science, calling electricity to its 
aid, has been able to give a miniature representation 
of the Creation — which is most interesting. 

Do you like biography? Well, you know, per- 
haps, that there are no biographies in literature that 
can compare with those of the Bible. You are not 
told how witty the heroine is and then find every- 
thing that she says perfectly commonplace. The 
story is not clogged with little essays on the per- 
sonality of each character. They are self-evolved, 
they show what they are by their speech and action. 
They are all faulty. In the most truthful biog- 
raphies ever written no excuses are made for the 
faults of the good ones, and the fine traits of the 
bad ones are frankly told. 

And then the love-stories ! The Bible is always in 

9 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

advance of every age, even in narration, and the 
endless details that used to be in vogue, and of which 
we are now so impatient, have no place here. It is 
"hot pressed narrative," Was there ever a more 
ardent lover than Jacob, laboring seven years to win 
his sweetheart ? And "it seemed to him as one day 
for the great love wherewith he loved her." And 
when humbugged and the wrong woman was foisted 
upon him — poetical justice for his own double-deal- 
ing — he set to work again for another seven years. 
It is such a relief to know that Rachel was given him 
at the end of a year, though he continued to give his 
services for the other six to his hard-fisted father- 
in-law. 

What a gentleman Boaz was ! How delicate the 
wooing by the rich man of the modest young widow, 
trying to support herself and her beloved mother-in- 
law in a strange country. 

Then in the story of Samson and Delilah we have 
the love of a man for an unworthy woman and where 
it leads him. And oh, the human nature, the "eter- 
nal feminine" which she displays in coaxing him to 

tell her his secret! She sobs and cries and is "so 

10 



GOD'S LETTER TO US 



hurt," and tells him that he does not love her ; and 
that is too much for the strong man — such tactics 
have been for many a strong man ever since — and 
he tells her the whole story. 

The word of God was likened by Christ to a seed, 
which is composed of two parts, the outer or shell, 
and the inner part containing the life. We have 
only thus far been talking of the sheath, made to 
conserve and protect the life. The relative values 
are evident. 

This book alone tells me that God is my loving 
Father, instead of a judge to be propitiated. But for 
this book we should have no certainty of assurance 
of any life beyond this present one — that we shall 
ever see again the dear dead faces that have been 
hidden from our sight. 

It answers all the questions asked by every human 
heart — " Where do we go when we die ? Why do we 
ever have trouble? How may we find happiness, 
how escape the fear of death, how grow into our 
noblest, highest possibilities ?" It also tells us what 
God is. Never could we, apart from this revelation, 
have imagined that the All-Mighty One, the Creator 

XI 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

of the seventy millions of worlds and suns which we 
call stars, loves us individually with infinite tender- 
ness, His care for us far transcending the intimate 
interest that a mother takes in all that concerns her 
little child. 

This book has given to us women our freedom, 
our rights as human beings. James Freeman 
Clarke, in his "Ten Great Religions/' says that one 
of the first evidences of the sway of Christianity 
among a people is that they begin to treat their 
women with honor and consideration. 

How strange it is that we should have to be urged 
to read this book ! 

In the days when it was a punishable offence to 
own a Bible one woman preserved hers from the 
men sent to search her house by concealing it in the 
dough for a loaf of bread which she calmly placed 
in the oven. 

Another family fastened an open Bible under a 
footstool which was conveniently turned upside- 
down when read, and effectually hid the book when 
not in use. 

One little maid defied them to take away the 

12 



GOD'S LETTER TO TJ S 



Twenty-third Psalm, for "she had it in her head" — 
the best possible place for our Bibles. 

How does it concern you personally? 

As you go through life you will have many joys, I 
am sure of it, but also some sorrows, trials, expe- 
riences, problems — every one has them — else we 
should grow selfish, shallow, hard, frivolous. God 
who made us knows how to manage us for our good. 

But you cannot open it at haphazard and find the 
words of comfort, of guidance, of love and forgive- 
ness when your time of need comes. You would not 
know where to look. During a terrific cyclone at sea 
I saw a very "smart"-looking young man holding 
an open Bible — upside-down — as he would have 
clung to a life-preserver — quite ignorant of how to 
use it, as he afterward confessed. You know what 
would happen to your body without food, to your 
mind if it had nothing to feed upon. The fact that 
our spiritual nature has no appetite shows it to be 
sick or weak. A healthy mind, body, and soul are 
very hungry things. 

Our neglect of the Bible may be partly because 
we know that we are not what we should be and dis- 

*3 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

like to have that fact brought home to us ; but, bless 
you ! the Bible is the "lovingest" book in the world. 
It even has the monopoly of certain words of love. 
It took two English words bracketed to express the 
tenderness of the original of "loving-kindness" and 
"tender-mercies," and "grace" means "blessing- 
full." 

If there is one thing more than another likely to 
astonish the angels, it must be to hear some light- 
minded girl or shallow young man speak slightingly 
of the Bible. I heard that Carlyle once said to such 
a one, as though thinking aloud : "Ye're a puir 
peetyfu' creature!" 

Let me tell you persuasively that this book holds 
for you comfort in all your trials : hope, encourage- 
ment, inspiration. It takes the sting out of trouble, 
it carries to your self-accusing heart the message of 
God's forgiveness, and the assurance that, however 
lonely or unappreciated, you are dear to Him; it 
tells how to "overcome" and to triumph gloriously. 
It is God's declaration of love to you. 



14 



WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS 
TO YOU AND ME 




CHAPTER II 

WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS TO YOU AND ME 

jHRISTMAS is our festival of glad- 
ness. He who made us to laugh, 
who gave us our love of fun, must 
be pleased to see His children merry. 
God has all the attributes of fatherhood and 
motherhood united — multiplied by infinitude. Many 
of us worship an "unknown God/' and represent 
Him to ourselves as far less lovable and attractive 
than the most ordinary earthly parent. 

A little child at his prayers one Christmas night 
suddenly looked up, and with a gurgle of laughter, 
exclaimed: "I almost said 'Merry Christmas' to 
God!" 

"I think He must have smiled," said his mother, 
sympathetically. 

"I guess He laughed right outf" the little one 
replied with conviction. 

17 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

May not the child's conception of the Father be 
nearer right than ours ? 

If you want to know what God is like think of the 
loveliest mother as a moral stepping-stone to your 
thoughts, and then study God's love in the light of 
Christmas Day. He deigned to "make friends" with 
His disobedient world and sent His offer of recon- 
ciliation by a little Child in whose person Godhead 
and humanity met. Jesus came to show us what 
God is, and what man ought to be. 

You know, perhaps, that the promise of His com- 
ing was first made to Adam and Eve. At the very 
beginning of the sorrow of our race, when Satan 
had inflicted its mortal wound, God, while pronounc- 
ing the penalty for disobedience, promised that "the 
seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head." 

Man has worked by the sweat of his brow ever 

since — not a curse, God's kind remedy for a curse. 

The curse lay in the evil incurred. Woman has 

brought forth children in pain and sorrow — but they 

have been her chief joy and the source of her best 

development. Good out of evil is God's method. 

The race was condemned to death, Satan seemed 

18 



WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS 

victorious, but One was promised who should over- 
throw his power. He who of all who have lived 
could be called "the Son of the woman," having no 
earthly father, should tread underfoot "that old 
serpent, the devil." The Old Testament holds the 
Promise, the New Testament the Fulfilment. To 
Abraham the promise is repeated. Where he lived 
the deity worshipped was the Moon-god. Abra- 
ham was called upon to leave the heathen en- 
vironment, unaccompanied by every protection 
known to his age — the great reward and incentive 
being that through his family "all the families of 
the earth should be blessed." Not a promise about 
which many of us, even nowadays, would be very 
enthusiastic ! — vide our languid interest in mis- 
sions — and yet, where should we be but for 
missions ? 

The Promise is again repeated to Isaac, discard- 
ing Ishmael; to Jacob, discarding Esau. It is this 
birthright that the unbelieving Esau "despised," not 
his patrimony. When Isaac was old, Esau was a 
rich emir with four hundred men under him. 

Moses, David, all the Prophets, tell of the Messiah 

"9 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

("the Anointed," "Christ," being the Greek form). 
Daniel and all who wrote after him paint Him as a 
Heavenly being. All earthly kings should bow be- 
fore Him and all the idols utterly perish. 

We are seeing that fulfilment. The divine pur- 
pose unfolds until in Isaiah (who wrote seven hun- 
dred years before Christ) we read plainly that the 
Promised One shall be born, as a little child, of a 
virgin mother, and nearly every detail of His life 
and death. It reads like history, not prophecy. 
Micah said that Bethlehem should be His birth- 
place. 

All the Old Testament, exactly as we have it now, 
was in circulation, jealously guarded, three hundred 
years before the birth of Christ. 

Let us see what our world was like when God 
sent His only-begotten to its help. Rome had con- 
quered all nations. Peace reigned at last. Augustus 
was on the throne, receiving divine honors. The 
people had lost faith in their gods or paid them 
perfunctory sacrifices. The old and sick were 
turned out to die, burdensome, no longer of use. 

Babies were exposed naked to the elements. If del- 

20 



WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS 

icate this would be "a good riddance." Women 
were toys or slaves — divorce so common that mar- 
riage was, as a rule, only a temporary relation. 
Children might be sold for their fathers' debts. 
Cruelty was a matter of course. 

But out of evil God brings good. The sway of 
one great power made travel from country to coun- 
try safe, so the way was made for the spread of 
the gospel — the "God-story." 

The Greeks worshipped deities, physically beauti- 
ful but morally abominable — often with shocking 
rites. Their nobler spirits sought for truth through 
the reason, and immortality was a hope, a dream. 

But man-made systems are so cold, so sad ! "Man 
has one advantage over the gods," said the Stoics, 
"he can die." Suicide was applauded. 

Among the Jews religion had become a thing of 
forms and formulas. The rabbis held the national 
conscience in their grip, imposing rules and machine- 
made prayers for every action of the day. 

"Having risen from bed it was lawful to move 
four steps, and but four, before washing the hands 
and face." Two famous schools of Pharisees quar- 

21 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

relied over the question whether an egg laid on the 
Sabbath could be eaten ! Religion was a slavery ! 

Theirs was the very delirium of pride. "On our 
account Thou hast created the world. Other nations 
are nothing, they are as spittle," was one of their 
modest claims. 

Their country being reduced to a Roman province, 
they emphasized the more all that was said of a tri- 
umphant Messiah — believing what they wished to 
believe — that He would scatter their enemies and 
give them national supremacy, discarding all proph- 
ecies that seemed to contradict this. 

But Judaism had its faithful ones, whose concep- 
tion of the Messiah's kingdom was pure and lofty. 
Among these there lived at Nazareth a godly pair, 
named Joachim and Anna, direct descendants of royal 
David, and the parents of the little sixteen-year-old 
maiden who out of all womankind was chosen to be 
the mother of our Lord. 

The family had become obscure, but Israel (espe- 
cially the tribe of Judah, because of its promise of 
the Messiah) preserved jealously all family records. 

Let us gather what we may know of her whom 

22 



WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS 

the angel called "blessed among women." The 
Roman Church has gone so far in doing her honor 
that Protestants lean to the other extreme. I have 
heard narrow-minded folk refer to her much as they 
might to a heathen goddess ! 

St. Luke is believed to have gathered his account 
from her own lips. She lived until eleven years 
after the crucifixion, and would naturally have been 
sought by the disciples. 

Joachim and Anna, after twenty years of marriage, 
had no child, and once when Joachim carried his 
voluntary gift to the Temple, the high priest called 
upon him roughly to confess the sin that had caused 
God to withhold so common a blessing. Joachim 
protested innocence, and fled to beseech God to 
grant him offspring. 

Meantime Anna was praying the same words, and 
to both, tradition says, an angel in a vision promised 
their hearts' desire. At her birth, Mary, like Samuel, 
was consecrated to God, and was left when three 
years old at the Temple, where maidens devoted to 
a religious life were educated. 

When Mary was of marriageable age her parents 

*3 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

chose for her a husband in Joseph — "a just man," 
a nephew of her mother's and therefore of her own 
lineage. Though a humble carpenter he was one of 
the noblest blood of his race, and legal heir to the 
throne of David. 

The betrothal took place at the home of the bride. 
It was more than an engagement, to be broken only 
by a formal divorce. 

According to custom the bride was to remain 
afterward in her own home for weeks, months, 
sometimes for a year. 

During such an interval, Mary, while alone, saw 
suddenly appear before her an angel — "Gabriel, 
sent by God," who exclaimed : "Hail, thou that art 
highly- favored !" 

Startled, awed, she is silent. 

The angel then tells her that she shall have a 
child: "That holy thing born of thee shall be the 
Son of God." A miracle should happen. She is 
told the divinely-given name, "Jesus," nieaning 
"Saviour," and of His everlasting, boundless king- 
dom, thus identifying Him with the expected 
Messiah. 

*4 



WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS 

Troubled at first she finally answers with digni- 
fied humility: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. 
Be it unto me according to thy word." Whereupon 
the angel departs. 

The angel had told her of his message to her 
cousin, Elisabeth. Naturally longing for sympathy 
and advice she went "with haste" to her kins-, 
woman's home, several miles distant. Upon seeing 
Elisabeth her full heart vented itself in a burst of 
joyous praise. 

Like some ideal Puritan maiden, deeply read in 
the Scriptures, when moved by lofty emotions she 
falls naturally into Old Testament phraseology. 
How innocently happy her exclamation, "Behold, 
from henceforth all generations shall call me 
blessed!" 

The sublimity of her psalm of joy reveals the 
quality of her mind. Its strength was shown when 
she stood by the cross. 

After three months with Elisabeth, Mary returned 
home. We may imagine her reluctance, fearing mis- 
understanding. 

Appearances led Joseph to believe his betrothed 

25 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

unfaithful to him, but, noble and gentle, he resolved 
to divorce her privately. 

In the midst of his anguish an angel appeared in a 
dream and told him the truth. Without hesitation 
he obeyed God's word, accepting his part: to 
give mother and child a man's protection and sup- 
port. 

The wedding was celebrated. There was feasting, 
and a procession of girls, carrying lighted lamps and 
garlands of myrtle, according to the custom. 

A few months later, a decree of Augustus ordering 
a census of the people preparatory to their taxation, 
Joseph was obliged to register his name at Bethle- 
hem, the city of his family. Though it was a three 
days' journey from Nazareth, Mary accompanied 
him. 

So many were drawn to the little town that they 
found upon arrival at the khan, or inn, that there 
was no room left. The only accommodation availa- 
ble was a natural cave in the hillside against which 
the khan was built, where cattle were stabled at 
night. Such caves were the homes of the very poor. 

The mangers in the daytime were cleaned, filled 

26 



WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS 

with straw, and covered with linen, forming the 
peasant babies' cradles. 

A khan is a low, stone structure built around a 
courtyard. Small rooms raised a few feet above this 
court open upon it. Travellers bring their own food, 
and carpets upon which they sit and sleep. Their 
cattle are tied in the courtyard. This particular 
khan had a history. 

The house of Boaz — the patrimony of David — 
was bestowed by the latter upon Chimham, a Gil- 
eadite, for military services, and became the khan of 
Bethlehem. Here, then, on the hereditary land of 
His earthly ancestors, Jesus was born. 

Meantime, out under the stars shepherds were 
guarding their flocks from wolves and robbers while 
the little town lay asleep. 

A region of unusual brightness in the sky must 
have attracted their attention, increasing and en- 
larging, when before their dazzled eyes an angel 
appeared, proclaiming: "Behold, I bring you good 
tidings of great joy ! For unto you is born this day 
in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the 

Lord ! And this shall be a sign unto you : Ye shall 

27 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

find the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in 
a manger." And suddenly a multitude of the 
Heavenly host join them, singing: 

" Glory to God in the highest, 
And on earth peace, good will toward men." 

This Christmas carol of angels is the only Heav- 
enly music ever heard by mortal ears. It is our 
Emancipation Proclamation. 

When Lincoln proclaimed the freedom of the 
slaves many of them did not believe it, some thought 
it too good to be true, others were content in their 
present condition. So, with our Champion's com- 
ing, our liberty was proclaimed, and then by His 
life and sacrificial death He bought us, He ran- 
somed us. We are His own by right. But 
He will force no claim. He says: "Come/' 
There is no condition attached but the faith to 
accept. 

Faith is absolutely necessary to the reception of 
any gift. Especially is this true of forgiveness and 
of love. If a man tells a woman of his love, how- 
ever much she wishes to believe it, the fact has no 

28 



WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS 

reality for her until she does believe it. It is true 
of material things. 

Christ was God's Christmas gift to you. There is 
but one thing that you can give Him, for which He 
cares : Yourself. That is always the only thing that 
satisfies true love. Make yourself a present to Him. 
It is His birthday ! 



29 



WHAT GOOD FRIDAY MEANS 
TO YOU AND ME 




CHAPTER III 

WHAT GOOD FRIDAY MEANS TO YOU AND ME 

IN a certain church in New York a 
three-hour service was held last 
Good Friday in memory of the time 
that Christ hung upon the cross. A 
short prayer, a hymn, a brief address were repeated 
seven times, each having for subject the successive 
utterances of our Saviour in His supreme agony — 
His second "Sermon on the Mount." The clergyman 
was young, impassioned, in dead earnest, and the 
vast congregation, hushed in profound reverence, 
listened eagerly, hungrily. 

At the close, after the shout of victory, "It is fin- 
ished!" and the words, "He bowed His head, and 
gave up His spirit," the "passing bell" began to 
toll — thirty-three strokes — the sum of a Young 
Man's years. 

The people instinctively fell on their knees for 
silent prayer. When, at the concluding stroke, the 

33 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

organ pealed forth the "Hallelujah Chorus," we 
felt that we had part in the angels' acclaim of wel- 
come to the Conqueror. 

The contrast between the recital of the greatest 
tragedy the world has ever known and the soul- 
stirring paean of joy and victory was most im- 
pressive. 

We feel the same contrast when we accept the sal- 
vation purchased by Christ's death. 

Do you girls indeed know that this wonderful 
salvation from the penalty of every sin may be yours 
for the taking? 

Deliverance from the power of sin is a matter of 
time, but God undertakes to lead His child step by 
step in this, too. The Christian life begins with 
forgiveness. 

Until I was seventeen I did not know this. I 
thought that if I were very good God would for- 
give me at death. Meantime I should carry the 
burden of all my evil doings with an ever-present 
sense of God's disapprobation. I thought that, when 
I should have become very virtuous, God would be 
won over to cancel the past. 

34 



WHAT GOOD FRIDAY MEANS 

One wonderful day I was told that, because of 
Christ's atonement, God would accept me at once, 
just as I was, with all my sins and imperfections on 
my head. Frankly, I did not believe it. I dared not 
take the risk, lest this view might be mistaken. I 
began to study the Bible and found it confirmed by 
type and symbol, plain statement, prophecy and ful- 
filment in both Testaments. 

I found that the Passover Lamb stood as a sym- 
bol to the Israelites of their deliverance from bond- 
age through the sacrifice of an innocent victim. 
When John the Baptist pointed out the "Lamb of 
God which taketh away the sin of the world/' 
Andrew and John needed no explanation. 

I pondered the meaning of such a text as "All we 
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every 
one to his own way ; and the Lord hath laid on Him 
the iniquity of us all." 

At last I surrendered, touched by God's love and 
mercy. Oh, how happy I was ! I seemed to walk on 
air. It was like being in love — when love is re- 
turned ! I thought that nothing could ever trouble 
me again. I looked up into the blue sky and smiled, 

35 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

for I realized that it but veiled my Father's 
face! 

That was the supreme moment of my life. The 
certainty of God's love has been its joy and inspira- 
tion ever since — in spite of unworthiness beyond 
the telling. 

My Bible was so fascinating that I could hardly 
wait to be alone with it to read all the loving, com- 
forting, cheering things said by Christ Himself for 
me, or by those whom He had loved and taught. 
The Old Testament, too, told me: "As far as the 
east is from the west, so far hath He removed our 
transgressions from us." "Thou hast cast all my 
sins behind Thy back." "Thou wilt cast all their 
sins into the depths of the sea." 

Could language express more fully God's forgive- 
ness and forgetfulness of sin? 

The death of Christ, the Son of God, for us, in 
our stead, is the central teaching of the New Testa- 
ment. Jesus means Saviour. Through the ages there 
have been such misconceptions of the atonement 
and of God Himself as to "make angels weep." 
God has been represented as an Eastern despot 

36 



WHAT GOOD FRIDAY MEANS 

whose anger must be appeased by the sacrifice of 
a victim. 

"God so loved the world that He gave His only 
begotten Son !" is the answer to that 

Why was this necessary? Penalty must follow a 
broken law in the moral universe as well as in the 
physical. Evil cannot be without evil results. The 
laws of right and wrong, of cause and effect, admit 
no more exceptions than those of gravitation or of 
chemistry. Man cannot do right or wrong as he 
pleases and incur no consequences. St. Paul con- 
stantly refers to "law," using the term as a scientist 
does — as "the eternal necessity." 

The Bible tells us, too, that in God's universe 
there are other intelligences, other moral beings, be- 
sides ourselves. There are references to their testing 
time. In justice to them God cannot excuse sin in 
us. This world may be the one "lost sheep." 

Sin is treason, rebellion, disobedience, discord, es- 
trangement, disease. How cure the leprosy, restore 
harmony, bring rebels to loyal allegiance ? In short, 
how shall God forgive so as to rescue the sinner 
from the power as well as the penalty of his sin, and 

37 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

justify his forgiveness to unf alien intelligences? 
Even by the sacrifice of Himself : by a life that ex- 
perienced human conditions; by a death of fiendish 
cruelty and the most ignominious that even a man 
could sufifer, for the cross was the Roman gibbet. 

"This little world was the altar of the universe 
on which lay the Almighty sacrifice/' Only love is 
capable of self-sacrifice, of self-immolation. Only 
God could pay the price of the universal sin of the 
race. 

An old English clergyman told this story : A boy 
asked his father how one person, Christ, could 
atone for the sins of millions. 

"Suppose/' said the father, "that there were on 
the ground a handful of worms. Would you not 
be of more value than they ?" 

"Yes," replied the boy. 

"Suppose a wheelbarrow were full of worms. 
Would you not be worth more than they ?" 

"Yes." 

"Suppose all the worms of the earth were gath- 
ered together. Would you not still be more valua- 
ble than they, however many?" 

38 



WHAT GOOD FRIDAY MEANS 

"I am sure I should." 

"Is there not a greater difference in the scale of 
being between Christ and man, whom He had made, 
than man and the worm? — between creatures and 
Creator? Had many other worlds sinned like ours 
the blood of Christ would be more than sufficient to 
atone for all." 

A Russian officer of the time of Alexander I. 
could not make his accounts agree: there was a 
heavy balance against him. He feared a severe 
penalty. Poring over the figures in his tent, he ab- 
sently scribbled on the paper before him, "Who will 
make up this deficit ?" Weary and worn out he fell 
asleep. The Czar passed by, saw the officer, and, 
curious, read the scrap of writing. A man of warm 
impulses, he seized the pen and wrote, "I, even I, 
Alexander." 

But even that great expiation might be made, yet 
hpw does it change the criminality of the sinner? 
An extraneous change would leave him as culpable. 
We can be made good only by some change in our- 
selves. 

Yes, but when a human soul has accepted that 

39 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

offer of pardon a change does take place in his own 
nature. That supreme test of God's love for us 
makes in us an appeal to new motives. Touched by- 
it, our hearts respond. We wish to requite that love. 
At least, we do not want to go on sinning and griev- 
ing Him — the first step toward God. 

It is a dealing direct with God which involves our 
deepest feelings and convictions. 

A new principle of ethics has been introduced, 
which, like leaven, works in the life to produce holi- 
ness. 

Zaleucus, King of the Locrians, made a law 
against a sin that was wrecking family life. He 
attached a penalty so severe as to terrorize — the 
putting out of both eyes. The first one found guilty 
was his own son. For love of him the King had 
one of his own eyes put out and but one of his 
son's, thus saving him from blindness, yet so 
honoring his law that none could break it with 
impunity. 

The son's heart was touched to repentance by his 

father's sufferings for him. 

God could have made us good, made it impossi- 

40 



WHAT GOOD FEIDAY MEANS 

ble to sin, but only by creating us automata — a 
world of puppets. 

There are no virtues that do not presuppose a 
choice between good and evil, no heroisms that have 
not overcome obstacles within or without. Char- 
acter is a conquest. Life and its circumstances are 
given to breed free, God-loving wills. 

I have seen a little girl put her doll's arms around 
her neck, saying, "My dolly loves me." The next 
moment it was on the floor, discarded; but the 
love of her little dog, that when others called 
obeyed only her voice, ah, that was worth some- 
thing ! 

This free-will, this power of choice, even God will 
not interfere with. It is our royal part. Mind, 
reason, the will may bribe with self-interest. We 
may use specious arguments to persuade ourselves 
to think as we wish to think. No ; the will is king. 
The elect are the "whosoever wills" — the non-elect 
are the "whosoever won'ts" — equal terms for all 
mankind. 

St. Paul likens the compact between Christ and 
the soul to a marriage, and calls the church — that 

4i 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

is, "the blessed company of all faithful people" — 
the "bride of Christ." Christ asks your love, your 
life. You are free to accept or not. He will not 
force your decision. If you accept you become His 
own. It is a secret compact, but later you stand 
forth openly and confess before witnesses that you 
love and belong to Him. You then take His name 
and are called a Christ-ian. 

But there are conditions of pardon, you say, 
Yes : faith, repentance, confession. What is faith ? 
It is nothing mysterious. We have not a different 
set of faculties for the belief of secular truth and 
religious truth. The difference consists in the thing 
which is believed. 

Faith is not a mere mental assent. Where belief 
in a person is concerned faith implies trust. When 
you believe in a man you have confidence in all that 
he says. Well, read what Christ has said, say "yes" 
to His every statement, and see to what you are com- 
mitted. Put your will into your belief. The Bible 
will do all the rest, illumined and vitalized by the 
Holy Spirit. 

What is repentance? A soldier once said that, 

4* 



WHAT GOOD FRIDAY MEANS 

according to his idea, it was "Halt! About face! 
March!" 

"To do so no more is the truest repentance," said 
Luther, but it is also a change of purpose — and God 
sees the perfected flower in the bud. The moment 
of repentance is the moment of initiation. 

A little boy, after being desperately naughty, 
would suddenly run from the room, and then return 
with beaming face, announcing, "Here's the good 
boy!" He was welcomed with smiles, kisses, and 
general rejoicings. The "naughty boy" had ceased 
to exist — for a time — but did those who loved and 
forgave think he would never sin again ? 

In the story of the prodigal, Christ tells how God 
forgives and welcomes : "When he was yet a great 
way off " his father ran to meet him. "Bring forth 
the best robe, and put it on him !" This was a gar- 
ment which covered the whole person. When the 
boy had put it on none could see his rags. 

Confession? Yes, Christ asks that we confess 
Him before men, for He knows that such an act, 
ranging us openly on His side, is a great help 
to our fidelity, a test of our sincerity. A sol- 

43 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

dier unwilling to wear the uniform is often a 
deserter. 

The word "sacrament" applied to the Lord's 
Supper comes from "sacramentum," a soldier's oath 
of allegiance. Your presence at His table announces 
your discipleship. 

Baptism stands for the open confession of His 
name by the disciple before the world — the enlist- 
ment on His side against the evil in it and in self. 
With some churches, "confirmation," "uniting with 
the church," or "first communion," is just the rati- 
fication of the "oath of fealty" made for us in our 
infant baptism. 

How may we make the salvation real and personal 
to us ? 

God knows and loves every one of us individually. 
That the hairs of our heads are numbered but im- 
plies the intimate knowledge of us that God thinks 
worth while. 

But just so personal is your sin. You sinned, 
your sin brings its own condemnation which Christ 
paid for on the cross. Love for you individually 
paid there your personal debt. Your sins, that sin, 

44 



WHAT GOOD FRIDAY MEANS 

which you can recall, was foreknown. And yet — 
He wants you! Every prick of conscience carries 
that assurance. 

We are not pardoned on the ground of compro- 
mise, but of justice. 

A man was drafted. He sent a substitute to 
the war, who was killed. When the man was 
drafted again he pleaded that he was already 
dead. That point has been decided in court three 
times. 

Do you still ask how you shall accept this great 
salvation ? Give yourself to God. Say simply : "Oh, 
my Father, take me to be Your own, just as I am — 
since You say that You love and want me I" Count 
yourself from that moment as belonging to Him. 
Settle it once and for all. You cannot take your- 
self back unless by your deliberate desire. 

Perhaps you may doubt that you have given your- 
self, but if you had been as sincere in making a 
present to a friend, you would not doubt that you 
had given it. 

You may not feel differently. Only an invisible 
line separates the United States and Canada, but to 

45 



THE BOAD TO HAPPINESS 

live on one side or the other of that line alters the 
whole allegiance. So inappreciable, at first, is the 
fact that we have been "translated into the kingdom 
of His dear Son." 

Don't look for feelings; think of facts. If our 
salvation depended upon our feelings we should be 
saved one day and unsaved the next. 

You are dissatisfied with yourself, you deprecate 
your lack of love? 

Don't think of yourself at all. Think only of 
God's love and sacrifice for you. Just begin to serve 
Him in the first duty that comes to hand — little 
though it be. Just refuse to do the first thing that 
the inner voice says is not quite right — and keep 
right on. 

Each time that you do what you know to be pleas- 
ing to God — for His eye alone — your love will 
grow. 

"Fear not, little flock ; for it is your Father's good 
pleasure to give you the kingdom !" 



46 



WHY WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE 




CHAPTER IV 

WHY WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE 

[OU must believe every word the 
Bible says, whether you understand 
it or not," is the reply often given to 
young inquirers. That is not put- 
ting it quite fairly. "You may believe" would 
be truer. "Must" arouses the feeling of "can't," 
thinly disguising "won't," sometimes even to our- 
selves. 

A thing is not true because it is in the Bible, but 
is in the Bible because it is true. The former state- 
ment is apt to lead to "making articles of belief out 
of our own interpretations," however erroneous. 
Such religionism reminds one of the small boy, who, 
when asked, "What is the equator?" replied, "It is 
a menagerie lion running around the centre of the 
earth," and doggedly insisted that the teacher said 
so, "imaginary lines" being matters outside his ken. 
Ignorance is the reason for much vague unbelief. 

49 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Every part of the Book has been challenged and 
fought over, and has come forth victorious, stronger 
after every conflict, until scarcely an enemy remains 
on the field, certainly none who has a fighting chance 
left. Ignorance made people deny that Christ was 
the Messiah, because Bethlehem was the birthplace 
prophesied and they heard that He came from 
Nazareth. 

Sir Isaac Newton once rebuked a sceptic thus: 
"Sir, do not disgrace yourself by presuming to judge 
on questions that you have never examined. ,, 

It is your right to know the foundations of your 
faith. A facile, unintelligent acquiescence is un- 
stable, unreliable. 

St. Peter says: "Be ready always to give an 
answer to every man that asketh you a reason of 
the hope that is in you." 

An African prince, living in England, when asked 
what he thought of the Bible, said he believed it was 
from God, for he found all the good people in favor 
of it and all the bad people against it. An old 
proverb says : "A bog in the heart makes a fog in 
the brain." 

So 



WHY WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE 

When Nicodemus, John the Baptist, and Thomas 
brought their doubts to Christ, He gave them facts. 
Now one of the most convincing of all facts, which 
we may examine for ourselves, is the fulfilment of 
prophecy. A human prediction can be nothing but 
a guess. We are as much bound to the present in 
time as to the earth's surface in space. 

A real prophecy must be a clear, unequivocal 
foretelling of events. Frederick the Great once 
challenged a Christian scholar to give in a sentence 
an unanswerable argument for the Bible's inspira- 
tion. The learned man replied, "The Jews, Your 
Majesty." 

Over three thousand years ago it was written of 
them, "The Lord shall scatter thee among all people, 
from the one end of the earth even unto the other" 
(Deuteronomy xxviii:64). The prophecy follows 
that they shall be oppressed and crushed, a proverb 
and a byword among all nations, a people without a 
king, prince, or government, and yet, through all 
their persecutions they are to be preserved for a final 
restoration. 

"I will make a full end of all the nations whither I 

5» 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

have driven thee : but I will not make a full end of 
thee" (Jeremiah xlvi : 28). 

The fulfilment is before our eyes. Citizens of 
the world, without a country, they have been perse- 
cuted wherever they have gone. Are they not a 
proverb for their wealth — "As rich as a Jew," a by- 
word for shrewdness? 

A story is told — naturally ascribed to a Jew — 
of a man who purchased a painting of a lake, in 
which the trees and sky were mirrored so clearly 
that they seemed duplicated below its surface. He, 
therefore, cut the picture across, and offered for sale 
two specimens of the artist's work ! 

Forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem it 
was predicted by our Saviour in detail. We may read 
of its exact fulfilment written by Josephus, a Jewish 
general, when taken captive to Rome by Titus the 
conqueror. 

Christ told His followers: "When ye shall see 
Jerusalem compassed with armies . . . flee to the 
mountains. . . . There shall not an hair of your 
head perish." 

Josephus writes: "Cestius Gallius, after begin- 

52 



WHY WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE 

ning siege, mysteriously withdrew without reason. 
Many embraced this opportunity to escape to the 
mountains." The historians of the first century tell 
us that the Christians fled to the mountains of Pella, 
and that not a single one perished. 

Most striking of fulfilled prophecy is that of the 
birth, life, and death of our Lord. When the dis- 
ciples after the resurrection went forth to win the 
world for Christ they had no thought of preaching 
something new. They proclaimed the fulfilment of 
the Old Testament prediction, no longer prophecy, 
but fact : "This Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is 
Christ." 

Appealing to the Scriptures — in circulation 
among the widely-scattered Jews since the third 
century b.c. — in which the life of the Messiah 
was written, and then claiming the testimony of 
those living at the time, eye-witnesses of what they 
related, they committed their cause to an argument 
that we may test in our day as well. 

We have their writings. These were assumed as 
authentic by friend and foe during the first four 
centuries, as credible, as the men themselves went 

53 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

to martyrdom to prove, and were issued when thou- 
sands might have refuted their accounts, yet all the 
Christians of the early centuries were converts from 
Judaism and Paganism. They had to be convinced. 

No one imagines for a moment, I suppose, that 
the Jews would have permitted any alteration in 
their ancient prophecies to prove the Christian argu- 
ment. Their hostility is the guaranty, aside from 
their great reverence, for the Scriptures. 

The Old Testament says that a certain being shall 
come, bringing salvation. God calls him "the man 
that is My fellow." Born as a child, yet one with 
the Everlasting Father; born of a virgin, of the 
tribe of Judah, of the family of David ; a friend to 
the poor, preaching good tidings. He gives eyes 
to the blind, feet to the lame, ears to the deaf. He 
is meek and gentle, He yet claims to be God. Pure, 
loving, unselfish, He is hated and persecuted, a man 
of sorrows. He will enter Jerusalem, on an ass, wel- 
comed with acclamations; will be betrayed by a 
false friend, sold for thirty pieces of silver (the price 
of a slave), scourged, smitten, spat upon, submis- 
sive as a sheep before its shearers. His hands and 

54 



WHY WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE 

feet will be pierced ; He will die as a malefactor, yet 
be buried in a rich tomb. No bone shall be broken. 

Wounded for our transgressions, He will meet 
death alone, forsaken, as it were, by God. He will 
forgive sins. His body will not soe corruption, but 
will rise from the dead and ascend to Heaven. 

From century to century for a thousand years 
B.C. these predictions were made. 

A real prophecy is nothing less than a miracle. 
Some have called a miracle "an interference with the 
laws of Nature," and this, they claim, is impossible. 
They think of God as hampered by His own laws. 
I drop a book; the law of gravitation carries it to- 
ward the ground. By another law, the exercise of 
my will, I snatch it before it falls, temporarily over- 
coming the law of gravitation, which continues in 
operation as before. May not God use laws above 
those of Nature? 

Supernatural means merely above the natural. If a 
fly could reason you would seem to him supernatural 
when reading a book. A being with electricity at 
command is supernatural to a savage. Is it not 
reasonable that one who claims to be a messenger 

55 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

from God should be able to show proof that none 
but God could give? Great miracles attested the 
claims of Moses and of our Lord. Moses needed 
divine credentials. 

All peoples worshipping many gods fear lest there 
be others unknown to them. They have no concep- 
tion of a benevolent god, and believe their deities 
powerful, but spiteful and malignant if ignored or 
slighted. Only because Moses came as the repre- 
sentative of a new god did Pharaoh grant him a 
hearing, but he must prove the god of those Hebrew 
slaves more powerful than the gods of Egypt, or 
expect summary execution. 

The greater number of the Hebrews that went out 
of Egypt believed in its gods. They, too, must be 
convinced of the superiority of their God over all 
others — so miracles and plagues were sent to 
strengthen their faith and terrorize their enemies. 

Christ was faced by the Jewish priesthood, which 
was regarded as infallible, also by the Roman power 
that had conquered the world — both inimical to 
Him, who was apparently a peasant carpenter with 
His following of a few fishermen. Miracles were 

56 



WHY WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE 

necessary. They were not mere wonders, but were 
all beneficent. He Himself said: "Though ye be- 
lieve not Me, believe the works." His enemies did 
not deny the miracles, but accused Him of collusion 
with the devil. 

Some ask why, if they were desirable to arouse 
faith, the days of miracles are past. Because they 
would be valueless. We already believe that the 
power of God is behind all the wonders of science. 
No such facts reach our moral nature, however. It 
is love, loyalty, our redemption from our lower 
selves, that God aims at for us. 

There are things hard to be understood. The 
Book tells of much beyond the range of our mental 
machinery. It is also a record of civilizations now 
extinct, therefore much in it is obscure. It is a book 
for the student as well as for simple folk. 

Drummond says : "Step by step, science has con- 
firmed the writings of Moses as far as geologists 
themselves agree/' "Light before the sun's ap- 
pearance?" "Vegetation without sunlight?" the 
cavillers exclaimed. These brought discredit on the 
Mosaic record. But "electric light," "the peculiar 

57 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

vegetation of the carboniferous era, independent of 
sunlight." Thus science now answers, indorsing 
Moses. 

All recent discoveries among buried cities confirm 
the Bible record, though time was when Herodotus 
was believed before it. 

There are alleged discrepancies, but they disprove 
collusion, and reconcilable diversity has often proved 
a confirmation of truth. 

During our Civil War there was a rough, popu- 
lar song that indicates by internal evidence the time 
of its composition. See if you can find it : 

" In eighteen hundred and sixty-one 
This cruel war was first begun ; 
In eighteen hundred and sixty-two 
We thought the war was almost through ; 
In eighteen hundred and sixty-three 
Abe Lincoln set the niggers free ; 
In eighteen hundred and sixty-four 
We'll all enlist for three years more." 

Reference to the President as "Abe" could belong 
only to that period. Just such evidence of time, 
place, authorship and circumstance, in incidental, 
unconscious allusion, proves the Bible's claims. 

58 



WHY WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE 

As an index of antiquity, its earliest books were 
written in Hebrew as ancient as the English before 
Chaucer would seem to us. The Hebrew of the 
latest ones had become a dead language to unlearned 
folk, as Greek and Latin are among us. Ages are 
required for a language to be formed, to reach its 
perfection, and to cease to be a spoken tongue. 

Language confirms claims of authorship. The 
books accredited to Moses are full of words of 
Egyptian origin — unconscious evidence of associa- 
tion — as our words "chap," "pal" (brother), 
"jockey," prove that our forefathers had dealings 
with gypsies. Literary critics say, too, that only 
those living in the first century a.d. in Judea could 
have written such a mixed language as the Greek 
of the New Testament. After the destruction of 
Jerusalem its people scattered, and the language 
ceased to be spoken. 

Style is an indication of authorship. Compare 
the ninetieth Psalm with tbe first chapter of Genesis' 
— both ascribed to Moses. David is known by his 
direct appeal to God. 

As Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" have as back- 

59 



THE BO AD TO HAPPINESS 

ground English scenery, not Australian, so the Pal- 
estinian books refer to "the cattle on a thousand 
hills/' The steep river-banks are infested with wild 
beasts. At the overflowing of the Jordan people 
would dread their incursion. 

In the Egyptian books Pharaoh dreams of the 
kine coming up out of the river. The Nile bank is 
the resort for a princess and her maidens. Daniel's 
visions were Assyrian ideals — great images, typify- 
ing power. 

References to automobiles and telephones would 
prove an American writer to belong assuredly to 
post-Revolutionary times. So the Bible authors 
reflect their own and no other age. 

But the most convincing evidence is not that of 
the intellect. There are "arguments of the heart un- 
known to reason." The teachings of the Bible never 
seem so wonderful as when we try to obey them. 

We are never so sure that Christ is God as when 
we strive to follow His example. "If any man will 
do His will he shall know of the doctrine, whether 
it be of God." The Bible proves itself inspired by 
inspiring. 

6q 



HOW TO GET WHAT THE 
BIBLE PROMISES 




CHAPTER V 

HOW TO GET WHAT THE BIBLE PROMISES 

|HEN I was a little girl, in my favorite 
castle in the air — and I was always 
fond of that kind of architecture — 
a beautiful fairy appeared and of- 
fered to grant any one wish that I would express. 
I thought myself very wise when I answered, "I 
wish to be happy," for that included all. 

After the granting of my wish I proceeded to 
dream dreams and see visions of my then ideals of 
what constituted happiness, and was surprised to 
find how complex a thing it was. Even in my fancy 
the possession of mere things brought satiety — 
which is a sort of mental nausea. 

Life has taught me since that over-indulgence in 
any pleasure kills all enjoyment. We can only go 
just so far without forfeiting the sense of pleasure. 

Why has God set these barriers ? He knows that 
we long for happiness, but He loves us too well to 

63 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

let us be contented with its lower forms. He has 
made us for happiness — permanent happiness — 
and anything short of forcing our wills He will do 
that we may not miss it. He is an indulgent, loving 
Father. He gives us many great joys, and strews 
little pleasures all along life's way. These last are 
our toys, but one who cares only for toys is a very 
low type of individual. 

The Bible, being the revelation of God's will con- 
cerning us, contains His promises for our happiness 
— based upon His knowledge of our needs. There 
are thousands of them, but the best of all — the 
most precious verse in the whole Bible — is, I think, 
"God so loved the world, that He gave His only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life/' Ever- 
lasting life ! Of all our longings the deepest is for 
immortality, accompanied by eternal happiness. 

Well, how are we to get it ? How do we get any- 
thing? Simply by fulfilling the conditions. That 
is pure common-sense — natural cause and effect. 
We cannot leave the oars in the bottom of the boat 
and drift with the current if we mean to reach a 

64 



TO GET WHAT THE BIBLE PROMISES 

definite point. "Whosoever" — that is you and I — 
it is impossible to use a more inclusive word — "be- 
lieveth." Here we come face to face with God's 
conditions. We must have salvation on His terms or 
not at all. Believing is having faith in some thing 
or some one. Faith, as spoken of here, is not the 
belief of a statement which, if denied, condemns 
you. You are not even asked to believe a creed 
formulated from the Bible, but to have the faith that 
means trust in Jesus Christ. This establishes a per- 
sonal relation between the Person Christ and each 
individual believer. 

Christ is our religion — not Christianity. Our 
Lord did not give us a system of ethics. He lived a 
life. Man did not so much need to be told what 
right and wrong were (God's law is written on the 
conscience and in the Scriptures) as how to deal 
with them as illustrated in a human life. Example 
is better than precept. If you want to influence any 
one for good take the good first into your own heart 
and live it. Success will be slow, but sure. 

The world differs in theology, but men of all the 
ages, races, and religions agree about a perfect char- 

65 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

acter — exhibited, too, under the most trying con- 
ditions and in public. Nobility, courage, patience, 
tenderness, self-sacrifice, are a language all under- 
stand. The universal verdict through the ages is 
that Christ was the best and noblest of the race. 

John Stuart Mill, the sceptic, said : "The disciples 
could not have invented such a character." Renan 
says of Him : "He was the purest, most lovable char- 
acter in all history." Jean Paul Richter calls Him 
"the holiest among the mighty and the mightiest 
among the holy," and Herder : "The realized ideal 
of humanity." Even the Mohammedans place Him 
in the line of Abraham and Moses as the saintliest 
saint in their calendar — except Mohammed. 

Assent to a religious formula, "belonging to the 
true church," may leave the heart, the self, unchanged, 
but love and loyalty for a Person bring inspiration, 
and every one's life is shaped by his or her love. 
Moral failure is impossible to one who follows His 
precepts or example. His teaching shows no per- 
sonal weakness, no narrowness of race, no error of 
His time — it is in advance of every age. 

All His faculties were balanced. All His acts 

66 



TO GET WHAT THE BIBLE PROMISES 

have an air of repose, dignity, sanctity. His holi- 
ness, purity, unselfishness, sympathy for every one, 
impress us as other-worldliness. He spoke with 
authority — not as the Scribes, who quoted prece- 
dent. He always heard and transmitted the Word 
of God as His own. He had the gentleness of 
one who can do all things. His words were "gra- 
cious." 

A centurion of haughty Rome was so deeply im- 
pressed that he deemed himself unworthy that Jesus 
should come under his roof. He uses the pronoun 
"We" as relating to Himself and the Father. He 
claims the right to raise the dead and to judge the 
world. He refers to a life with the Father "be- 
fore the world was." In all His humility He ad- 
vances personal claims that in a mere man would be 
the delirium of blasphemy. 

The soldiers sent to arrest Him are put, by His 
words and manner, under such constraint of fear 
that they report, "Never man spake like this man." 
Pilate is oppressed by a sense of awe of his prisoner. 
The centurion keeping guard at the cross, impressed 
by the manner of His death, exclaims: "Truly this 

67 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

was the Son of God." Love and worship cannot 
but grow if we study reverently that life and 
death. 

Believe that Christ is all that He claims to be, 
trust Him with your soul, your life, your all. Try to 
live in the sunshine of His realized presence day by 
day and for His approval — "and life is conquered 
and you crown is won." 

Another great need of our hearts is met by God's 
promise, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give 
good gifts unto your children : how much more shall 
your Father which is in Heaven give the Holy Spirit 
to them that ask Him ?" 

In every one there is, besides the common nature, 
a particular person. You know that Christ died to 
save the world. Did He fail? No, but you 
find it hard to believe that you, personally, are 
included. 

Do you ever long for God's love and favor ? Does 

conscience ever trouble you and arouse the wish to 

be better? Well, that is the Holy Spirit's voice. 

That is God's choice of you individually — His call 

and invitation. 

68 



TO GET WHAT THE BIBLE PROMISES 

Nothing could be more personal than this secret 
and repeated solicitation to your innermost self — 
Spirit to spirit. 

The Holy Spirit pleads the work of Christ, the 
love of God promises endless happiness. Our arch- 
enemy, the devil, offers present pleasure or ad- 
vantages, throws dust in our eyes about the future. 
The one tries to win us to good, the other to lure 
us to evil. Ours is the deciding voice, ours the free 
choice. 

We have but to take God simply at His word. 
Nothing is so insulting as to have one's word 
doubted. In novels, if one man says to another, 
"You lie!" — the statement usually follows — "a 
stinging blow laid the man at his feet." We who 
can lie and do lie are so sensitive about our honor ! 
See what St. John says : "He that believeth not God 
hath made Him a liar ; because he believeth not the 
record that God gave of His Son. And this is the 
record, that God hath given to us eternal life : and 
this life is in His Son." 

"Faith is the laying hold of something." Henry 
Ward Beecher said : "It seems to me like putting 

6 9 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

one's hand into God's, with St. Augustine's prayer, 
Take my heart, for I cannot give it to Thee. Keep 
my heart, for I cannot keep it for Thee.' " 

Do not doubt that you have given yourself to God 
because you do not feel different. God looks at 
your purpose. 

The Jewish law of offerings to the Lord settles 
your problem. Anything laid upon God's altar was 
henceforth His. You no longer belong to yourself. 
You must try now to be an obedient child, for you 
are His child. 

Horace Bushnell says that the expression "born 
again" is equivalent to our term "naturalization," 
whereby a foreigner is, before the law, made into 
an American. Foreigners were regarded by the 
Jews as unclean. A Gentile believer in the true God, 
in order to be admitted to the privileges of a "Son of 
Abraham," had, with other rites, to be baptized — 
"the washing of regeneration." He disappeared 
from the earth — under the water — he emerged 
as one reborn. 

Another promise, conditional upon our acting con- 
currently, is "Whosoever, therefore, shall confess 

70 



TO GET WHAT THE BIBLE PROMISES 

Me before men, him will I confess also before My 
Father which is in Heaven." 

A man who will not acknowledge his wife before 
the world is ashamed of her. A foreigner, unwilling 
to take a public oath of allegiance, is not accepted as 
a citizen of the United States. 

People sometimes cheat themselves into think- 
ing that they are too distrustful of themselves. They 
distrust God. St. Paul says : "I am persuaded that 
He is able to keep that which I have committed unto 
Him." Some want to make secret trial of them- 
selves, just as I once heard said: "If such people 
were placed in Heaven itself they would not sing 
for the first month, pretending that they had not 
tried their voices !" 

The trust that secures God's promises for our 
future and eternal happiness is as effectual for the 
brightening of every day, here and now. 

The Bible is the most practical book in the world. 
Faith is the key that unlocks its treasures. God will 
free us from the dominion of all our sins, carry all 
our burdens, manage all our affairs, if we will let 
Him. 

7« 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Here are some of the promises to faith: "He that 
trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him 
about"; as a mother's arms are around her little 
child to shield and comfort, so God's mercy enfolds 
you. Apprehensiveness, suspense, anxiety are like 
the sword suspended by a single hair over the head 
of Damocles. "He shall not be afraid of evil tid- 
ings : his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord." As 
you rest your weary self on your bed at night, rest 
your heart on God. "Thou wilt keep him in per- 
fect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because 
he trusteth in Thee." 

He promises rest and refreshment to the weary 
and heavy-laden who come to Him. We "come" by 
faith. He tells you to "cast all your care upon 
Him," adding tenderly, "for He careth for you," and 
promises to bear your burdens if you will "cast them 
upon" Him. "Draw nigh to God and He will draw 
nigh to you." God virtually says : "Whenever you 
wish to be with Me or speak to Me I will meet you." 

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His right- 
eousness, and all these things (material needs) shall 

be added unto you." This has been literally ful- 

72 



TO GET WHAT THE BIBLE PROMISES 

filled to countless numbers. A widow was suddenly 
reduced from wealth to poverty through a dishon- 
est trustee. She said to me : "I do not worry about 
anything. I feel like a character in a story. I am 
wondering what the Author is going to do with me. 
He has a place for me somewhere. I do hope I may 
fill it to His satisfaction." Her trust was so marvel- 
lously justified that to her friends it seemed a mir- 
acle. 

But all the good people are not prosperous and 
happy? No, goodness would not be the splendid 
thing it is if it were always rewarded. It could not 
remain disinterested, unconscious — the real thing. 
It requires omniscience as well as love to govern 
even our little world, and develop each of us to our 
best possibilities. The finest jewels get the most 
polishing. "They shall be mine, saith the Lord of 
hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels." 
Royal children must study and work harder than 
those whose future positions are to be in humbler 
spheres. "Now ye are no more strangers, and for- 
eigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of 
the household of God." 

73 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

The Lord has secrets with His trustful ones. 
"Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him 
and He shall bring it to pass." Bring what to pass ? 
It — that which you are longing for, or else some 
great happiness that God's love is planning for you. 

Here are promises made to love. Pillow your 
heart upon this : "All things work together for good 
to them that love God." This is one of the laws of 
His kingdom. 

"Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall 
give thee the desires of thine heart." 

When we love God with enthusiasm and joyous 
spontaneity so as to find delight in Him, we may 
be trusted to have our heart's desire. The govern- 
ing purpose is right. When the rudder is set 
straight the ship may go blithely on its way. 

How shall you learn so to love God ? The exercise 
of trust gradually grows to be love. Obedience — the 
kind that makes us live and work as though God 
were at our side — increases love ; so does answered 
prayer and all God's goodness to us, but most of all 
does the contemplation of God's love for us win 
our own. Say over and over to yourself, "God 

74 



TO GET WHAT THE BIBLE PROMISES 

loves me," until it sinks into your heart. Waste no 
impression by repeating the words mechanically, 
unaccompanied by your concentrated thought. We 
might doubt it in spite of His gracious assurances 
of affection, but we cannot doubt the love that ex- 
pressed itself in Christ's self-sacrifice. That is a lan- 
guage that cannot mislead or deceive. 

He loves you better than you love yourself. Noth- 
ing that concerns you is indifferent to Him. You 
are as truly the object of His love and care as 
though you were the only being in the universe. 

4< Where God hath placed and keepeth you 
He hath no other thing to do." 

Cannot a mother of twelve children love each 
one as though it were an only child ? 

"He that spared not His own Son, but delivered 
Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also 
freely give us all things ?" God puts the question. 



75 



WHAT THE BIBLE PROMISES 
TO PRAYER 




CHAPTER VI 

WHAT THE BIBLE PROMISES TO PRAYER 

|ITTLE children are taught to say 
"please," and they are not given 
what they ask if they refuse to do 
so. Wise parents know the value of 
mannerliness to the future happiness of their chil- 
dren. That little word "please," in contrast to "I 
want," means a great deal. It imposes the self- 
restraint of courtesy, the acknowledgment of obliga- 
tion. It is educative. 

In like manner God has made many of His gifts 
and promises conditional upon prayer — "Ask, and 
ye shall receive." He knows our needs, our long- 
ings beforehand? Yes, and yet He tells us to ask. 
Probably it is to teach us our dependence upon Him, 
to make occasion by our wants to win us to seek His 
presence, and so to grow to know Him, to awake our 
love and gratitude by answered prayers, and edu- 

79 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

cate our trust in His wisdom when some of 
our requests seem unanswered or the answers 
delayed. 

"Do you expect to change the laws of the uni- 
verse by your prayers — laws set in operation mil- 
lions of years ago, perhaps ?" asked one. 

"My prayers were foreseen and taken into account 
when the laws were made, perhaps/' was the reply. 

Prayer is a deep-seated human instinct. Those 
most sceptical about it when placed in a position of 
helplessness pray instinctively. In all ages, among 
all peoples, all ranks of life, man has prayed to the 
invisible. Left to himself he peoples the air, the 
forests, the sea with beings to whom he makes peti- 
tions. And they are "persons." Those who pray 
to a stone address some one behind the stone who 
they believe can help them. Others are ignorant 
of God, yet they pray in order to avert calamity or 
trouble through superstitious fear of the super- 
natural. 

A child was overheard to say to a comrade, "I 

forgot to say my prayers last night — and nothing 

happened. I'm not going to say them to-night — 

80 



THE BIBLE'S PROMISE TO PRAYER , 

perhaps — and if nothing happens I'm never going 
to say them again !" 

These are some of the reasons why we pray ; but 
how shall we pray? How puerile that man should 
so often reduce prayer to mere forms of words. I 
once saw a Mahometan saint who spent most of his 
time repeating over and over the name Allah (God), 
while fingering a string of a thousand beads. Bud- 
dhism is especially noted for this kind of praying, 
and because a man cannot say more than a certain 
number of prayers in the twenty-four hours, they 
have invented praying-machines, windmills and 
water-wheels, upon which they fasten written pray- 
ers, which, at every rotation of the wheels, are sup- 
posed to offer up their petitions. Oh, how God's 
children have misunderstood Him! 

I think sometimes that few of us really pray at 
all, unless we are in trouble or want something 
intensely that we have little hope of getting. We 
say our prayers, of course, but that is no more pray- 
ing than galvanized motion is life. Words are not 
prayer. Prayer has meaning. It is the heart's de- 
sire that God hears. 

81 



THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

To some of us our prayers are as meaningless and 
mechanical as those of a little boy whom I knew of. 
His mother, having overheard his responses in the 
Litany, asked what it was that he said. 

"I say just what you do," he replied. 

"And what is that ?" asked the mother. 

"An-an-i-ron-us, come down upon us, and do us 
these," was the reply. 

I think that many of us are "started wrong" as 
children. We are taught that we "must say our 
prayers" — usually a little piece of poetry recited — 
which grows meaningless through repetition — and 
thus get our first lessons in putting God off with a 
mere form of words instead of learning to know and 
love Him through personal communion and real 
intercourse. 

Children of themselves do not know what to say, 
of course, being unconscious of any need, but if at 
other times they are told of God's love for them and 
interest in all that concerns them, little by little they 
will get into right relations with Him and speak to 
Him naturally. One little child, left to her own re- 
sources for expression, could get no further than 

82 



THE BIBLE'S PROMISE TO PRAYER 

"Hello, Dod!" in a spirit of confidence, but later, 
with fuller knowledge of Him, said impulsively : 

"Dear Lord, I love You just lots! Thank You 
for giving me such good times, and please give 
everybody good times, too. Bless all the dear people 
I love, and me — and my dolly, and help me to be 
so good that You'll be glad. Amen." 

I heard of a Bible-class the other day for "Girls, 
Married and Unmarried." That is my audience, 
the one that I see before me as I write. Mar- 
riage does not take the "girl" out of a girl, but 
married girls have added interests, so I make the 
suggestions about children for them. 

The comfort and immediate help in prayer de- 
pends almost entirely upon our apprehension of 
Who it is with Whom we speak. Before you begin 
take time to realize God's presence, His glory, 
omnipotence, and love. Hold yourself in His pres- 
ence after making your petition. He may have 
something to say to you that comes as an answer or 
inspiration, or carries the comfort that "underneath 
are the everlasting arms." 

In my childhood my mother's arms were my 

*3 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

refuge for every grief, and in the perfect assurance 
of sympathy that enfolding gave, the hurt of body or 
soul gradually subsided. That is what prayer will 
do for us. 

You have heard, perhaps, of "prayer with a string 
to it." We sometimes try to pray our cares and 
troubles away ; we do not leave them with God, but, 
as it were, keep hold of the string by which we draw 
them back when we rise from our knees. 

There is much difference between asking and 
taking. If we are sincerely sorry for a fault, and, 
confessing it to God, ask for forgiveness and re- 
stored favor, we have fulfilled the conditions upon 
which He promises pardon, and may go from our 
prayers relieved and happy. If we do not believe 
this our burden remains. Too easy, you say ? God 
means to make pardon easy to those who come to 
Him in repentance and faith. 

There have been those who have thought it easy, 
and presumed to do the wrong first, secure in the 
thought of asking forgiveness afterward. I know 
of a small boy who, after eating all the grapes that 
he wanted, would ask his mother's permission to 

84 



THE BIBLE'S PROMISE TO PRAYER 

have some grapes. If she gave it his conscience was 
at ease. If she refused he had had the fruit. He 
took the risk with one not omniscient. Children's 
ways are good illustrations because of their naive 
doing of what their elders do less innocently, and 
a lesson may be as effectively conveyed by some- 
thing to laugh at as by graver methods. 

The model prayer was given by Christ Himself. In 
the oldest MSS. it begins with "Father!" — a more 
directly personal address. Its first petitions have 
to do with God, not ourselves. This puts us in the 
right attitude. It begins and ends with worship, 
and takes account of our temporal needs as well as 
spiritual. 

In the parable of the Pharisee and the publican 
we have again our Lord's ideas about prayer. 

"The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with him- 
self/' Self gets all the worship, the thanks, and 
the praise. 

As universal as the instinct of prayer is the sense 
of personal ill-desert, of conscious demerit, and a 
feeling of estrangement from God. Through all 
the ages, among all peoples, this is true. After 

85 



THE KOAD TO HAPPINESS 

nineteen centuries of the preaching of God's love and 
Christ's redemption we have lost the sense that 
we must placate an angry God, as do those who offer 
their children to the flames in heathendom — and 
yet, we never come before God otherwise than as 
suppliants for undeserved favor. Only when the 
individual has become part of a system — when 
Satan has so drugged the conscience that to be a 
"son of Abraham" — a "true believer" of Islam, 
or a member of the "true church" has annihilated 
personal accountability, does man stand before God 
and boast of his good deeds, like the Pharisee of the 
parable. 

The Talmud prescribed so many rules and the 
devotion of so much time to religious formulae, that 
the poorer people with their way to make, their work 
to do, could not compete with men of leisure. 

The publican had learned somehow of the good 
God, to whom he could appeal, upon whose mercy 
he could throw himself, and the cry for pardon came 
from the depths of his heart. 

We here learn that there is an after-effect upon 

those who pray. The Pharisee was harder, more 

86 



THE BIBLE'S PROMISE TO PRAYER 

self-satisfied than before; the publican returned 
home with a sense of forgiveness and peace at 
heart. 

Other parables of Christ's speak of importunity. 
The persons are represented as asking in dead- 
earnest: they beseech, implore, adjure. 

A child cries for a thing, and the mother gives 
it — not to hush the child's noise — but because he 
seems to want it so much and the mother-heart can- 
not resist that appeal. Only when it would be dan- 
gerous to the child, she can be deaf to its most 
clamorous cries. 

I cannot vouch for the statement of my own 
knowledge, but I read in a prominent journal, some 
years ago, in an article by a Professor of Oriental 
languages, that the word "Amen" — which is the 
same in all tongues — does not mean "so be it" — 
as many of us have been taught, but is a word of 
thanksgiving. 

Its pronouncement at the close of a petition is an 
act of faith, whereby we thank God for what we 
have asked, feeling sure that He will grant it, unless 
He knows that could we share His far-seeing wis- 

87 



THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

dom, we ourselves would not wish it granted. Do 
we not trust our fellow-mortals so, often adding to 
a letter making some request, "Thanking you in 
advance/' before adding our signature ? 

We often "do not feel like praying." Never mind, 
kneel down, think of God, draw near to Him, and 
the prayer will come. 

Sometimes, at night, we pray fervently full of pur- 
pose for better, higher living, and then go to sleep. 
The next morning our mood is changed; we have 
slept off the influence that then impressed us, and 
we remain much as we were before. 

It is like making a promise and then forgetting it, 
for prayerful purpose is making a promise to God 
and ourselves. Every time such feelings pass off 
without being expressed in life and action they lose 
something of their power over us, become dulled, 
blunted, wasted spiritual force. Fancy your physical 
muscles braced ready for a spring, and something 
interferes and you relax them. If that happened 
frequently you would unconsciously put forth less 
and less effort, and the very feeling would weaken. 
Therefore, is it vastly important to take time in the 



THE BIBLE'S PROMISE TO PRAYER 

morning for our spiritual equipment for the day — 
even at the sacrifice of fifteen minutes' sleep. 

As for position in prayer, use that in which you 
can best concentrate your mind upon what you are 
saying, best realize God's presence — provided it be 
truly reverent. To pray in bed, lying at ease, so 
drowsy, perhaps, as to fall asleep in the midst, is 
not reverent. 

Now, what of the answers to prayer ? If prayer 
were what it is generally, unthinkingly supposed to 
be, it would be that we ask for what we want, and 
God gives or withholds it. But think what confu- 
sion that would make. The Russians would have 
prayed for the annihilation of the Japanese, and vice 
versa. Our lives would not be safe for a moment. 
We might have an enemy through no fault of ours 
— a jealous person might wish us removed. We 
should be at the mercy of spiteful malignity. No; 
God answers as a fond mother might to her family 
of little children, each clamoring for its own way. 

I read of a young girl, bitter and rebellious be- 
cause her prayer for her mother's life was not 

granted, and then followed these words: "There 

89 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

are few deaths, thank God, where no one has prayed 
that the dear one may live." Do you suppose that 
prayer is given in order that no one may ever die 
until we are willing? All deaths must seem to 
friends the evidence of unanswered prayers. But 
prayer is a blessing because God knows best how 
to answer. God knows when to say "No." 

My earliest recollections of prayer are : "God bless 
papa and mamma and me, and make me a good little 
girl." If I lapsed into naughtiness I felt that God 
did not fulfil His part of the compact. He was 
to make me good if I did the asking. I expected 
omnipotence to control me — make me good by 
force, setting my own will aside, which would, of 
course, make any virtue merely mechanical, auto- 
matic, worthless in its power to develop and mould 
into moral nobility. 

I stupidly made the same mistake in teaching my 

own children, and was once surprised at the refusal 

of my small son to pray at all, saying, "What's the 

use? I don't grow any gooder. He doesn't mind 

(obey) me!" 

This was startling, and revealed to me yet an- 

90 



THE BIBLE'S PROMISE TO PRAYER 

other misapprehension about prayer. When our 
prayers are habitually answered, and in the way 
that we have asked, we grow to feel injured and 
rebellious if any are refused. Insensibly we take 
the position of commanding, and expect Him to 
obey! It sounds shocking, but I know the "spoil- 
ing" effect of answered prayers is much like that 
on a young child habitually given what he asks for. 
God must guard us from that. He sees our tenden- 
cies with unerring judgment. 

The Puritans used to say that "God answers 
prayer in kind, or in kindness" — gives what we 
ask or denies us for our good. 

"What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, 
believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have 
them." 

This is for the high reaches of faith. There are 
both promises and precepts for those in God's higher 
classes. Many of us never get beyond the primary 
department. Among the precepts is "Be ye per- 
fect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect." 
Such an aim would be given only to those who had 
already attained moral heights. 

9* 



THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

Such, in God's school, will covet spiritual prizes 
rather than material ones, and these are obtained 
by faith. I do not mean that the promise made to 
faithful prayer is limited to spiritual things. God 
is an indulgent parent. He will give us all that He 
can without prejudice to our eternal interests. 

To pray is a privilege of which we, perhaps, do 
not realize the inestimable value — to take hold of 
omnipotence, to have the ear of the Almighty Ruler 
of the universe, joined to His promise, "Every one 
that asketh receiveth." All who ask do receive — 
possibly not just what they ask, and in the specified 
way — for we are children asking of a Father. 
What kind of parent would he be who would do 
whatever the child asks and in the way he asks it? 
No ; he — if he be a wise and loving father — uses 
his best judgment prompted by his fond affection 
to do as nearly what the child wants as is con- 
sistent with that child's best good and for his ulti- 
mate happiness. Prayer is not a fetich that shall 
have power to impose its answer. It is the will of 
the human being appealing to the Divine Will, and 

just what we ourselves would want — if we could 

92 



THE BIBLE'S PROMISE TO PRAYER 

see into the future and see results as God can — 
our Father will give us. Every prayer is answered. 
Blessings or events will happen that but for the 
prayer would not happen. As God bids us pray, 
nothing doubting, and show our earnestness by our 
perseverance, so He promises that we shall receive 
what we ask, or some better thing for which we 
must trust His love and wisdom. 



93 



SOME OF THE STORIES 
JESUS TOLD 




CHAPTER VII 

SOME OF THE STORIES JESUS TOLD 

LITTLE girl once said in reference 
to the parables, "Oh, I do like story- 
lessons !" We all do. During a ser- 
mon, how alert and interested people 
look the moment a story is introduced. Jesus knew 
that in addressing a mixed crowd no form of teach- 
ing would enchain attention, hold interest, and be 
so apt to recur to mind afterward as that which 
illustrated great truths by stories drawn from the 
every-day life of His audience. 

Then, too, as always in a casual crowd, there 
were many kinds of hearers. Those who had any 
thirst for truth, any longings for self-betterment, 
would ponder the meaning of the story, and recall it 
the more readily, for its narrative form. 

Others, drawn by mere curiosity, with hearts dull 
and unready for any spiritual impression, would be 
less culpable if they failed to see the meaning 

97 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

underlying the tales than if they rejected a plain 
teaching. No appeal to conscience leaves us quite 
as it found us. Rejection of good deadens it. 

It seems as though our Lord intended the para- 
ble of the wise and foolish virgins particularly for 
young girls. The maidens condemned are not 
wicked, only careless, neglectful of duty. Jesus, the 
gentle, calls them foolish — which, of course, means 
that to neglect present duty, thoughtlessly trusting 
to luck for the rewards that come only to those who 
work for them, is to act like fools. 

And it is something to ponder that these young 
girls missed all the pleasure they were anticipating 
in the wedding festivities. They were shut out. 

A friend once described to me a wedding in the 
East. It will explain why the maidens were unwel- 
come. My friend was a guest at a fine old castle, 
crowning a wooded hill near Sidon, the inmates of 
which were as proud to trace their ancestry to the 
heroes of the Crusades as were any family in 
Europe — though they fought on the opposite side. 

The son of the family was about to be married, 
and on the wedding morning the "friend of the 

9* 



SOME OF THE STORIES JESUS TOLD 

bridegroom" went to summon him, attended by- 
several of his young men friends, all in fine attire. 

In the East the men outvie the women in rich and 
brilliant apparel. The bridegroom came forth from 
his chamber in gorgeous array, and they then all 
proceeded to mount the horses that awaited them at 
the castle gates. Followed by their servants quite a 
cavalcade set off to bring the bride from her distant 
home, where the betrothal had already taken place. 

The wedding — a ratification of the betrothal — 
was always celebrated at the house of the bride- 
groom, attended by great festivities, to which all 
friends, neighbors, and retainers were bidden. 

The celebration was held in the evening, and the 
time so arranged that the bride's arrival should be 
after nightfall. 

At the expected time the woods surrounding the 

castle were filled with people, the men bearing 

torches and the women little lamps. At the news of 

the coming of the bridal cavalcade they would 

hasten to line the way, holding aloft their lamps and 

torches to light the passage of the young couple and 

their attendants all the way to the castle. 

99 
LOFC. 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Detentions often occur, as happened in the case 
that I am recalling. Hour after hour went by, and, 
weary of waiting, many "slumbered and slept" — 
the balmy air and dry climate making it safe to lie 
anywhere. 

Presently the cry came, "Behold the bridegroom 
cometh ; go ye out to meet him I" Instantly all was 
activity. Every woman trimmed her little lamp to 
add its glow to light the pathway of the happy pair. 
Some preceded, some followed the cortege, and all 
went into the castle to join in the fun and festivities. 
And the door was shut. 

Doubtless there were foolish virgins like those of 
the parable, who had made no provision of extra oil 

— and whose lamps were beginning to go out when 
the bridal party arrived. 

Conveniences for illumination being unknown 
and many lights being most desirable to promote 
the gaiety of the scene, each person brought a light 

— it was like a ticket of admission. A guest was 

unwelcome without it. On grand occasions the 

entertainer offered becoming robes to his guests — 

the number of rich garments kept in store for such 

ioo 



SOME OF THE STORIES JESTJS TOLD 

■i ■ ■ i ■— — —■ i i — — . n i —————— —————— 

lending and for presents in wealthy families was 
very great — but etiquette required that each guest 
bring his or her quota of light. 

In the early days of New England every man was 
expected to bring his candle with him to the prayer- 
meeting. It was to the interest of all to induce 
others to be present for the sake of the added cheer- 
fulness. 

Allusion to this custom at entertainments among 
the Jews, familiar to the hearers of Christ, would 
illustrate His meaning. The oil that furnished the 
light typified character, which only can enable us to 
"shine as lights in the world." It always seemed to 
me, when a child, that the wise virgins were very 
ungenerous — ignorance often makes us sympathize 
with the wrong persons — but when I realized how 
incommunicable a thing character is I understood 
their reason — "lest there be not enough for us and 
you." 

The parable of the unjust steward has to do with 
money — God's great rival. 

A rich man in the East with large possessions 
always employed a steward, which left him free to 

IOI 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

enjoy himself, undisturbed by responsibility. A 
rich Roman often owned a whole province or an 
island in the Mediterranean with populous cities 
upon it. The steward collected rents and managed 
all the business of his master. It was a position of 
tremendous responsibility and offered great tempta- 
tions to cupidity. As a rule the stewards were men 
of ability; but few resisted the opportunities for 
peculation, which was carried on on a large scale. 

There were not wanting many, therefore, who, 
coveting the office, sought to oust the incumbent by 
arousing in his master's mind doubts of his steward's 
integrity. 

In this parable such a man had just learned of 
his master's intention to discharge him. He is on 
the verge of discovery and disgrace. He has spent 
freely, counting upon long-continued opportunities 
for enriching himself, and has laid up little. He has 
expensive tastes and habits. His pride will not let 
him work or ask help. 

He reviews the situation and cleverly makes 
friends of his lord's debtors — probably his accusers 
— and draws them into complicity, tempting their 

I02 



SOME OF THE STORIES JESUS TOLD 

self-interest. He authorizes them to change their 
bills to less amounts than they owe, signing them 
with their private seals. 

In the East a signet ring rather than a signature 
is used in all legal documents — a thing which can- 
not be forged or imitated. 

These seals affixed to the steward's bills were 
proof of the collusion of his accusers. If he went 
to prison they, too, must go. They could not accuse 
him lest he turn the tables. Not out of gratitude for 
his kindness could he count upon their friendship 
and be "received into their houses," but because of 
their fear that he would betray them. 

The employer, learning all this (the one hoping 
to succeed the steward would have his spies about), 
was so impressed with the cleverness of the man 
in office that he retained him, preferring to have 
such a one working for him than perhaps against 
him. 

He evens commends his astuteness. A man of 
average morality would, in spite of the deception, 
admire the cleverness. I once heard a mother ex- 
claim to a friend with a wink of gratified pride, 

103 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

when her young daughter had told a ready-witted 
lie : "How well she fibs, the little wretch !" 

Our Saviour then contrasts the zeal of those in the 
service of Mammon with the lukewarm, half- 
hearted service so often given to God. In nothing is 
mankind so untiring as in the pursuit of money — 
and womankind is no less eager for what it buys. 
No devotion is too absorbing, no labor counted too 
great, so the reward be an adequate sum; every 
faculty is taxed, interest never flags, in this 
Mammon-worship. 

Is it not God's rival? God cannot often count 
upon such tireless effort, such spontaneous enthusi- 
asm. 

The "children of this world" set an example to 
the "children of light/' who sometimes do not even 
use their common-sense in the affairs of their own 
eternity and the service of their God. 

Christ then says — and the world has cavilled and 
puzzled over it — "Make to yourselves friends of 
the Mammon of righteousness." 

This Mammon, this money, is a power that may 

be used for good as well as for evil. It need not be 

104 



SOME OF THE STORIES JESUS TOLD 

God's rival, but His servant. Since it is the medium 
of exchange between man and man it has a power 
and influence that are legitimate. 

Make it therefore your friend — not the enemy 
that may drag you down and separate you from God 
and happiness. Make it minister to your benevo- 
lence, to the blessing of your little world, "that 
when it fails" (and only when we die does money 
utterly fail to be of use — nothing then so power- 
less) the friends thus made may receive you into 
everlasting habitations. 

Then occurs a remarkable statement: "If there- 
fore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous 
Mammon, who will commit to your trust the true 
riches ? 

"And if ye have not been faithful in that which is 
another man's, who shall give you that which is 
your own?" 

Money is no part of us. It is ours to-day, it is 
gone to-morrow; but in the life to come we shall 
have that which is our own inalienably — character, 
developed powers, disciplined wills, the love of good 
and of God. These we shall take with us — they 

i°5 



THE BO AD TO HAPPINESS 

form our true capital — the "treasures" we are told 
to lay up. We leave the money behind. 

We are all stewards here — be it of little or of 
much. In the world to which we are going we shall 
be no longer stewards. If we have been faithful 
in that which is least (this mere money and the 
opportunities it brings) God will give us the 
true riches. 

We do not know what these may be. Who, see- 
ing a seed, could imagine what the perfect flower 
would be? 

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the 
theme is again "stewardship," but the scene of the 
story is carried further — the argument is carried 
to its conclusion. There was a rich man who was 
clothed royally and "fared sumptuously every day," 
and a certain afflicted beggar was laid at his gate. 
The beggar's name is recorded — Lazarus ; that of 
the rich man is not thought worthy of mention. 

It is an Eastern scene, depicting the ordinary life 

there. With us hospitals and institutions remove 

from sight the very poor and afflicted, who in the 

East are constantly in view, lining the wayside. 

1 06 



SOME OF THE STORIES JESUS TOLD 

A rich man going through the streets would carry 
a bag of paras (about the tenth part of a cent), and 
it would comport with his reputation as a wealthy 
and benevolent man to drop a few of these small 
coins in the hand of each of these unfortu- 
nates. 

They would not thank him, but raise eyes and 
hands to Heaven invoking God's blessing upon so 
generous a man and thank Him for creating so 
noble a being. This ministers to the man's sense of 
importance, and from repetition creates the flatter- 
ing impression that he is somewhat superior. 

Now Lazarus was carried and laid at the gate of 
the rich man of the story, deliberately placed there 
as a sort of advertisement of the benevolence of the 
master of the house, and fed daily with the 
"crumbs," garbage, thrown to him and others as to 
the dogs, which, by-the-way, were friendly to him 
— usually evidence in a man's favor. 

The beggar dies and is carried by angels to a 

place where Abraham, "the friend of God," does not 

disdain to call Lazarus friend and equal — for 

"Abraham's bosom" refers to the manner of re- 

107 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

i 

clining at table when eating, customary in Christ's 
day. As the table is always and everywhere the 
social landmark, the place given him near Abraham 
is significant. 

The rich man also dies and — it offends the 
sensibilities of some persons to mention the place — 
but Christ said that he was in hell. 

The parable is set in Oriental imagery. The 
people of the East are accustomed to metaphor and 
symbol which to the Western mind are alien and 
hard to understand ; but there seems to be here the 
plain teaching that the rich man had in his lifetime 
received all good things, which he had selfishly mis- 
used — he gave even "crumbs" ostentatiously. 

To human eyes Lazarus was but a sick beggar, 
but he had that within him which made him wel- 
come in high Heaven. 

The one life was tested by prosperity, the other 
by adversity. A great, an impassable gulf separated 
the two after death. 

The laws of the moral universe are as immutable 

as those of the physical. As we sow, we reap. 

It is not necessary to be rich to imitate the man 

1 08 



SOME OF THE STORIES JESUS TOLD 

whom Jesus condemns. We need only make a 
selfish use of what we have. The spirit is the same 
whether one has much or little, and that is what God 
sees. "If thou hast little, do thy diligence gladly to 
give of that little." 



109 



CHEERFULNESS 




CHAPTER VIII 

CHEERFULNESS 

LIKES to be jolly and I alius tor" 
quotes Glory Quayle in "The Chris- 
tian." Instead of "jolly" read "hap- 
py," and that is just what God wants 
you to be able to say — that much-misunderstood, 
misrepresented Father. No wonder that those who 
have never known Him think that to belong to Him 
may be hard bondage when those who profess to do 
so often appear so gloomy. The "real thing" is not 
gloomy — it is the admixture of earthly alloy that 
makes uncheerful Christians. 

Many girls write to me about their troubles. I 
should like to tell them about some of my methods 
for cheering up. I confess to being just as eager for 
happiness now, just as impatient of anything that 
clouds it, as I was at their age — so I just had to 
find ways of living in sunshiny places. I chanced 
upon Ruskin's words: "We may always be sure, 

"3 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing 
God if we are not happy ourselves." That sounded 
"motherly." I searched my Bible to see if it were 
true and I was overwhelmingly convinced ! 

"But," you may say, "why does God let trouble 
come to us if He wants us to be happy?" 

Did you ever see a mother-bird teaching her little 
ones to fly? She makes the nest so uncomfortable 
that they are obliged to learn the use of their wings. 
The discipline of life is mercifully arranged to teach 
us to use our wings — the powers that lift us heav- 
enward. And these same wings can enable us to 
fly above and over many of our troubles and to live 
in the sunshine on the mountain top, while in the 
valley below the storm rages. 

One wise in the secret of how to be happy in the 
midst of trouble speaks of life on wings, and calls 
one wing "Trust in God's love," and the other 
"Obedience to His will." Both must be used to- 
gether. We have the wings. Using them develops 
them, and only using them, as we learn to swim only 
by swimming. 

j, George MacDonald writes: "You may say, 'We 

114 



CHEERFULNESS 



don't want suffering ! We don't want to be good !' 
But God says, 'I know my obligations, and you shall 
not be contemptible wretches if there be any resource 
in the Godhead!'" 

Suffering is never punishment, never, except in 
that effect follows cause, just as if you put your 
finger in the fire it will be burned. Christ asks: 
"Think ye that they upon whom the tower of Siloam 
fell were sinners above others ? I tell ye nay." 

This is not the place of punishment. "Tribulatio" 

— the source of our word "tribulation" — was the 
Roman threshing instrument for separating the 
wheat from the chaff. I therefore dare elimi- 
nate from my griefs the bitter thought that God is 
angry with me. Nothing makes trouble so intolera- 
ble as that. No, it always means love, whatever 
God sends. "Spell the word 'discipline' with a final 
V — 'discipline'" 

In great sorrows God seems very near us Himself 

— especially if we have learned to know Him be- 
fore the sorrow came. I am thinking, too, of the 
many smaller troubles which we may fly over. For 
these there is nothing so magical in its effect as to 

"5 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

take to your heart the truth that God loves you. I 
once sent some flowers to a woman in much trouble, 
and realizing as I handled the frail, beautiful things 
that I was only a messenger, I wrote on my card, 
"God sends you these with His love." 

That message comes to me with flowers, birds' 
songs, the beauty of Nature everywhere, with all 
the stray brightnesses and pleasant little surprises of 
life — "God sends you this with His love." These 
things are none of them necessary, but just the 
largesse of love! 

An additional thought, suggested by one worthy 
of trust, "happifies" me : I say to myself, "God loves 
me and approves of what I am doing." Does that 
sound shockingly self-righteous? Really it is not. 
Try it. There are numberless times when you know 
that you are doing your duty ; say it then. It has a 
wonderfully cheering effect to feel certain of God's 
loving approval — if only for a minute. Surely, we 
were never meant to feel ourselves always under 
His disapprobation. Nothing could be more par- 
alyzing to amendment. Fancy a child living in such 

relations to a parent ! The consciousness of pleasing 

116 



CHEERFULNESS 



Him makes us so happy that we shall want less and 
less to risk our claim to that joyful assurance. So 
shall we bring each action up to that test. 

I found a beautiful new commandment in the Bible 
— new to me, though it has been there a few thou- 
sand years — "Thou shalt rejoice in every good 
thing which the Lord thy God hath given thee." I 
deliberately made a list of all my blessings, learned 
it by heart, and have added new ones ever since. 
"If God loves a cheerful giver He must love a cheer- 
ful taker, too !" 

When sorrowful or despondent thoughts clamor 
for attention I meet them with a rehearsal of my 
mercies — the loss of any one of which would blot 
out my sunshine. When they are very insistent I 
go for a brisk walk, reciting my rosary of blessings 
on the way, and that, with God's fresh air, blows 
the blues away. 

We make many troubles for which God has made 

no provision of happiness. One of these is worry, 

or apprehensiveness. Like children we are "afraid 

of the dark" and people it with bugaboos. 

An anxious-minded woman was once advised to 

117 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

write a list of the worries tormenting her, seal it up, 
and put it away. Coming upon it by chance some 
months later she found that not one of the expected 
evils had come to pass ! We are not given strength 
to bear things till they come. 

Christ tells us to be care-full for nothing, to take 
the present good as the birds do, happy and care- 
free as little children, secure in their parents' loving 
care. 

An old gentleman, an inveterate "worrier," once 
acknowledged that things always turned out better 
than he feared. I asked why he continued to live in 
constant apprehension. He replied: "Why, I am 
afraid not to worry, for when I do, things turn out 
so well !" That did seem like turning God's prom- 
ises wrong side out! Present joy "heartens" us to 
bear what may come. If there is something hard 
to bear which you must meet, take the advice given 
by a wise old lady: "Don't chew your pills before 
you swallow them !" 

Mrs. Burnett's latest charming story advises us 

to say to ourselves at the beginning of each new 

day: "Something pleasant is coming." Expect 

118 



CHEERFULNESS 



pleasant things, look for them. They are sure to 
come. No day is without them. 

Another of our self-appointed troubles is discon- 
tent. Socrates suggested that if all the blessings 
were cast into a public stock for equal distribution, 
those who now think themselves unfortunate would 
then be thankful for their previous condition. Or, 
if our deserts determined our share, should you 
have more? 

Life is tedious, humdrum, commonplace ? Yet 
God has placed you there to learn your lesson of 
life, and He is neither incompetent nor indifferent. 
You are ambitious, perhaps. God rehearses His 
actors behind the scenes. "Faithful in that which 
is least" is the preparation for all greatness. You 
may realize Christ's fellowship in this. Think of 
those uneventful years of obscurity and obedience in 
provincial Nazareth. 

Do you remember St. Paul's argument for trust 

and contentment? "We brought nothing into 

this world." No, but what a provision awaited us ! 

Everything had been anticipated and was ready for 

pur coming. Air for our breathing, food for our 

119 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

sustenance, a strong, young father proud to protect 
and provide for us, a loving mother to cradle us in 
tender arms and give her whole soul's devotion, 
brothers and sisters eager with their glad welcome. 

A wee girlie said of the new arrival in her family : 
"Oh, mamma, I think God must have looked all 
through Heaven for the very prettiest baby He had 
to send us!" 

"And it is certain we can carry nothing out." We 
shall not need to. Everything will be prepared for 
us there, too. We may well trust God's planning 
for us here is St. Paul's conclusion. Content is the 
product of faith and love and hope. 

Discouragement is hard to bear. Don't bear it — 
turn a deaf ear to it as you would to temptation. 
When the blues threaten, fight them in the begin- 
ning. Nothing encroaches so much if you give them 
a hearing. 

It is not "Well done, good and successful serv- 
ant," but "faithful servant," to whom unending 
bliss is promised. 

This is how one college boy preached cheerful 

encouragement to himself: "Be wise. If incon- 

120 



CHEERFULNESS 



venient to be wise, be otherwise. This is the wisest 
thing to do. And anyhow — don't mope. If you 
lose ten thousand 'plunks/ who cares? Don't let 
the immortal soul go on a strike because of any- 
thing. Life is full of petty prickles. But — what 
of it? You have about ten million, billion, trillion 
years to live (to start with), and — if things don't 
go to suit you — just smilingly inform them that 
they'll have to !" 

"A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck !" 
Some of us have to live or associate with cross, 
irritating, quarrelsome persons. Doctor Johnson 
said of one such, "If he had two ideas in his head 
they would fall out with one another." They are 
provoking, but if you knew their sources of irrita- 
tion you would not mind so much. The French have 
a proverb, "To know all is to forgive all." 

In your dealings with them recall the dear old 
fairy stories in which the amiability of the heroine 
was constantly being tested by the appearance of 
some hideous old crone — in reality a powerful 
fairy in disguise. Christ comes to us disguised 
under many unlovely forms to test our love and with 

121 



THE KOAD TO HAPPINESS 

purpose to reward and bless. Remember the "In- 
asmuch." 

These trying persons are bringing us good gifts. 
Can we learn forbearance if never provoked, for- 
giveness if never offended? This life so full of 
seemingly insignificant frictions is all we need to 
develop heroism. 

All "disagreeables/' even all trials, pass away 
eventually. There is but one part that lasts forever 
— the way we bear them. That becomes part of 
our life-record, part of our very selves, and millions 
of years hence it will matter to us whether we 
yielded or triumphed. 

Perhaps you are depressed, "low-spirited," with- 
out special cause that you will confess even to your- 
self. Never listen to self-pity — unless you enjoy 
melancholy. Never brood. Keep busy. You can- 
not be self-centred and happy. 

A woman's supreme joy is to be loved. Few 
things are more winning, more endearing than a 
sunny temperament. "Assume a virtue if you have 
it not." In manner be glad and gracious and joyous. 
At least keep your face bright, your smiles ready, 

122 



CHEERFULNESS 



your voice cheerful, and your heart will not long 
"be laggard to your lips." "See to it that every 
one likes a room better with you in it than out 
of it." If you are cross hide it as you would a crime. 
A certain little girl, when she was sulky, was obliged 
to sit on a high chair until she could sing a cheer- 
ful song. For a time she preferred misery to 
cheering up, but finally she piped her song of 
victory. 

Dante places low in his "Inferno" those who wil- 
fully live in sadness. "He that hath so many causes 
of joy is very much in love with sorrow and peevish- 
ness who loses all these pleasures and chooses to 
sit down on his own little handful of thorns," says 
Jeremy Taylor. 

If you are God's own child you must be ready 
to bear your burdens, take your knocks, and 
shoulder your way through the crowd with a bright 
eye, a brave smile, and a cheerful heart. 

On the night when our Lord ate the last supper 
with His disciples "they sang a hymn" before part- 
ing. Do you know what it was? The one usually 

sung at the close of that feast had for refrain : "O 

123 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His 
mercy endureth forever!" 

Then He went to Gethsemane. 

One of the greatest joys of life is to make other 
people happy. We need to be needed. 

Begin at home. Practise on the family. Little 
acts of loving-kindness oft-recurring are worth more 
than occasional big services and sacrifices — because 
habit becomes second nature. 

To make the sunshine of a home is the most love- 
worthy thing a girl can do. It puts a song in the 
heart. To allow others to be mistaken, to give up 
when yielding will prevent some one's being chafed 
and fretted. To be blind to cross looks and deaf to 
cross words — patient toward the temporary irrita- 
bility — these are some of the ways to secure steady 
home sunshine. 

"Serve the Lord with gladness." It helps toward 
cheerfulness if we never allow ourselves to say any- 
thing gloomy. Complaints of anything - — even the 
weather — create feelings of discontent that are 
contagious, if not irritating. 

Outside the home "Do what you can do. Not 

124 



CHEERFULNESS 



what you cannot do. Not what you think ought 
to be done. Not what you would do if you had 
more time, more money. Not what somebody else 
thinks you ought to do. But do what you can." 
And keep right on until by-and-by you may add 
this to your prayers : 

" Dear Lord ! Kind Lord ! Gracious Lord, I pray 
Look on all those whom I love tenderly to-day, 

And with all the needy, oh, divide, I pray, 

This vast treasure of content that is mine to-day." 

Those dear Puritan ancestors of ours have much 
to answer for. The fathers of those days must 
have loved their children, but their ideals were stern 
and lofty, and shaped their conceptions of God. An 
extreme case, in England, was the "proud Duke 
of Somerset," whose children never presumed to sit 
in his presence, but stood until their knees wobbled 
under them, when they would ask permission to 
withdraw. 

Christ came to show us what God is like. "Greater 
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his 
life for his friends." And it is impossible to love 
people and not long to make them happy. 

125 



HOW TO READ THE BIBLE 
AND ENJOY IT 




CHAPTER IX 

HOW TO READ THE BIBLE — AND ENJOY IT 

jO you want an antidote to the troubles 
of life ? Do you want to learn short 
cuts to happiness? Do you want to 
make the most of yourself — "so 
pass through things temporal that you finally lose 
not the things eternal"? 

Then read what God has to say to you individu- 
ally, taking Him at His word, really believing that 
He means exactly what He says. 

You do read the Bible sometimes? Well, you 
know that you cannot eat breakfast enough one day 
to last a week, and souls have to be fed with some 
regularity as well as bodies. 

If we have no appetite there is something wrong 
with us. 

I once asked a poor woman to lunch with me. To 
my surprise she ate scarcely anything. The food 

might as well have been imitation food. Accus- 

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THE BOAD TO HAPPINESS 

tomed to eating only enough to live, her capacity- 
had shrunk. Nature removes things that are not 
used — the blind fishes in the Mammoth Cave once 
had eyes. The capacity of the soul for God is lost 
through disuse. 

Never mind the past! Let us turn our backs 
upon it and face the brighter and better future. 

I assure you that if you will spend half an hour 
or even fifteen minutes daily upon the study of 
God's Word you will not only be vastly profited, 
but interested, even fascinated. 

Don't refuse to begin, fearing you may not per- 
severe. If you omit a reading you have not broken 
a vow, but you have missed a privilege. 

One of the charming beginnings of children's 
fairy stories is "In the days when wishing had 
power," bringing entrancing visions of magic ful- 
filments. Wishing always has power. It is what 
you need to start you in quest of that which shall 
bring you visions, and the fulfilment of your 
deepest longings. 

A lady once asked a wise old clergyman: "Why 

is it that I have no joy ?" 

130 



TO BEAD THE BIBLE-AND ENJOY IT 

"Where are you looking for it?" he asked. 
"Search the Scriptures if you really want 
it." 

The way that most people read the Bible is to take 
a chapter daily or a portion morning and night. If 
this is your way — your only way — it will grow 
perfunctory. 

The most deadening way is to read a daily portion 
and lay the thoughts with the book aside with a 
comfortable feeling of duty done. 

Choose the time when least likely to be inter- 
rupted, when your mind is fresh — not the sleepiest 
moments just before bedtime. You need your 
weapons of warfare through the day when duties 
and temptations meet you. Lock yourself in with 
God. Concentrate your thoughts. Say "I am in 
the presence of God. Now He is going to speak to 
me. 

We must deliberately put ourselves in a reverent, 
receptive mood. God cannot get at us if we will not 
pay attention. 

I first enjoyed studying my Bible through a 
system of marking. I underlined with red ink all 

*3* 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

the texts I could find in both Testaments that told 
of our salvation through the death of Christ. 

Turning over the pages my eyes could light at 
once upon the words thus marked, and I had the 
whole subject before me. 

The texts bearing upon our Lord's divinity I 
underlined in gold ink; the precepts for Christian 
living in blue ; the promises in green ; the words of 
condemnation in black. It looked a bit like an illu- 
minated missal. When the colored inks were ex- 
hausted I followed the usual method of writing near 
to one text the reference to the next on the same 
object. 

Using the colored inks is a beginner's way of 
"studying the Bible topically," which, all seem 
agreed, is the most interesting way. 

Another and fuller method is to gather all that the 
Bible says on any one subject, using a Concordance 
(Strong's, Young's, or Cruden's). Look up every 
passage that has the leading word or its kindred or 
synonyms in it and make a list of them. 

Begin with the subject you care most about. 

5A/e are all interested in what great men say on 

13 2 



TO READ THE BIBLE-AND ENJOY IT 

various topics. It is, above all, interesting to know 
what God thinks and says. 

Most of us know a part — neglecting others — 
overlooking certain proclamations of our King and 
so losing the royal bounty. We need to know all 
that the Bible says on a subject or we grow one- 
sided. Those who magnify some truths and ignore 
others become cranks and fanatics. 

Have a definite plan. Make a list of many sub- 
jects and take them in turn — to prevent wasting 
time wondering aimlessly where to read. 

The fundamental truth of "God's love" is a good 
subject to begin with. "Christ's practice of His own 
precepts," "God's ideal woman," will reward effort. 
"When I pray I talk to God, when I read the Bible 
God talks to me," says Moody. 

St. James compares the Bible to a looking-glass. 
A mirror shows us ourselves and what there is to 
be set right about us. 

Some one asked: "Is not conscience my truest 
guide?" 

"Is your watch a better timepiece than the sun?" 
was the reply. 

*33 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Having collected your texts, ponder them: their 
meaning will unfold. Meditation extracts their 
power to help and strengthen. Learn by heart the 
passages that impress you most; pigeonhole them 
in your memory as belonging to their subject. 
Appropriate their teaching. You get no nourish- 
ment from merely setting food correctly upon the 
table. 

Yet another method is to study book by book. 
Reading an entire book at a sitting, you get the 
whole sweep of its subject and it lodges better in 
memory. 

Begin with a short book, a comparatively easy 
one, with few difficulties and rich in teaching — St. 
Paul's first Epistle to the Thessalonians, for example 
— the first book of the New Testament ever written. 
Read the book through again and again. 

One particularly joyous Christian attributes his 
happiness to the Epistle to the Ephesians. Taking 
his Testament into the woods one Sunday after- 
noon he read the epistle twelve times, his mind and 
heart keenly alert. When he returned home the 
teaching of the epistle was his own. 

i34 



TO READ THE BIBLE-AND ENJOY IT 

I once heard of an old negro who said that his 
favorite part of the Bible was where "Paul pints his 
'pistle at de 'Phesians." 

In studying a book write at the top of separate 
papers, "Who wrote this, and what is known of 
him?" "To whom written ?" "Under what cir- 
cumstances of the author and those addressed?" 
"What subjects are treated?" "What is its central 
truth?" 

In reading, as you come to the answers, write 
them under their appropriate heads. The result of 
one's own work impresses more than anything 
found ready-made, and also stimulates interest in 
books about the Bible. 

Each book has its own message. Genesis teaches 
our power to choose whether we will obey God or 
yield to our lower impulses; Job is on the problem 
of evil; St. John's first epistle is on the believer's 
assurance. 

If we put the messages of the books &11 together 
we formulate a creed or doctrine. Take a single 
doctrine and collect from the books all the import- 
ant passages on the subject (using a Concordance). 

i35 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

I was once intensely interested in what the Bible 
says about the Devil. 

Don't come to the study with preconceived ideas 
as to what the passages mean. They tell a story in 
Iowa that at a famous trial, after one lawyer had 
ended his argument and before the other had begun, 
a juryman rushed from the courtroom. On the 
judge's asking for an explanation he said: "I have 
got my mind made up now and I don't want it 
disturbed !" 

Study of doctrine should be undertaken in a rev- 
erent, teachable spirit, accompanied by the closest 
obedience to God's known will. That is the best 
commentary. "If any man will do His will he shall 
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." 

By the careful, prayerful reading of the Bible the 
truth sinks in, whether or not we can put it into 
words. 

I greatly enjoyed studying the life of Christ by 
seeking to transfer the Christ-spirit into modern life. 
Wherever the Gospels told of His relations with 
others I tried to see how His example could be 
followed in our lives to-day. For instance, "He ate 

136 



TO READ THE BIBLE-AND ENJOY IT 

with publicans and sinners." His social pride did 
not prevent His meeting them on an equality that 
He might be helpful to them. 

I once called upon a girl, living over a poor little 
shop with a dirt floor, and I urged her, for her own 
development, to help in the mission services for girls 
which were being held in the neighborhood. 

"Oh, I couldn't," she replied. "I don't want such 
people bowing to me on the street I" 

Again, Christ sends His disciples first to the lost 
among Israel, and begins His mission work among 
His own people. 

"Why look at your duties through a telescope?" 
asked Conscience of one consulting her. 

"I wish to see only those beyond my reach," was 
the reply. 

Many of us have such a telescopic view. 

To make one's own "Harmony of the Gospels" 
familiarizes one with them as nothing else does. 
Provide yourself with two copies of the New Testa- 
ment — they may be had at ten cents apiece — and 
a large-paged blank-book. Divide each blank page 
longitudinally into four columns — one for each Gos- 

137 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

pel writer, leaving a margin at the left for the sub- 
ject. For example write "The Genealogies" in one 
margin, then cut from the books and paste on the 
page St. Matthew's and St. Luke's accounts in the 
columns marked with their names. St. Mark and 
St. John having no record of them, their columns 
are left blank. 

St. Luke is the historian of the early years. St. 
John tells of the first year of Christ's public min- 
istry, which St. Matthew could not — his disciple- 
ship beginning in the second year. Step by step 
you follow the whole matchless life in chronologi- 
cal order. Get Alford Butler's "Life of Christ" for 
chronology — it costs only thirty cents. 

Where all four writers record the same event, com- 
pared side by side they throw light on each other. 

Reading the Bible straight through we get the 
best idea of the book as a whole, and an ever- 
increasing sense of God's presence as its author. 
There are things obscure and perplexing, neces- 
sarily. It is the record of thousands of years, of 
extinct civilizations, of rugged times, and it reflects 
the ages it represents. It is a translation from 

138 



TO READ THE BIBLE-AND ENJOY IT 

Oriental languages, full of their imagery and of 
references to obsolete usages. For example, "Woe 
to the women that sew pillows to all armholes" 
(Ezekiel xiii:i8) — a custom of the lazy, self- 
indulgent women of the time, that their arms might 
rest upon the cushions thus placed, effectually pre- 
venting all activity. It is a book for the student as 
well as for the wayfaring man. 

If it does violence to our reason we may be sure 
that we have not understood it. A thing that is 
round on earth cannot be square in Heaven. Ask 
and expect God to make it plain. We take a 
"worm's-eye view," you know. The abstract truth 
may be beyond the range of our intellectual ma- 
chinery. "The boy who discredits his wise father's 
statements because to his infant mind they appear 
unreasonable is not a philosopher, but a fool." 

If this is the Word of God we may lay aside 
criticism and humbly obey where we cannot under- 
stand. Spurgeon said that he read the Bible as he ate 
fish — enjoying the flesh and laying aside the bones. 

I once saw a Bible in which the owner had 
written in her own name at places where it seemed 

139 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

to carry a more personal application, "Fear not" 
. . . "I beseech thee ... by the mercies of God." 
At the back she had used the fly leaves to write 
what she called her "life-Bible," texts which she had 
tried, proved, and lived upon — which she had made 
her own. 

Try studying the Bible with others. A friend 
said to me: "I have masters for all sorts of things, 
but what I need most is to be taught my Bible." She 
found a man, simple, "godly," who refused compen- 
sation, but suggested her asking friends to join them. 

Ten of us gathered cozily around her dining- 
table, Bible in hand, and our teacher explained, 
verse by verse, the portion that we selected. 

That hour, once a week, became so valuable to us 
that when our teacher was called away we continued 
our study together, each contributing the result of 
her meditation on the portion chosen at the previous 
meeting. 

If you know any other language than your own 

read the Bible occasionally in that. You get new 

shades of meaning — English has not always the 

exact equivalent of the original. 

140 



TO BEAD THE BIBLE-AND ENJOY IT 

The study of types will make the driest parts of 
the Bible reveal interesting and valuable truths — 
the Tabernacle, the Passover, the High Priest, the 
scapegoat. 

Study with the object of helping others. Every 
saved soul is in honor bound to spread the Gospel. 
So many, when asked to show some poor soul the 
way back to God, are at their wit's end. Fill your 
heart so full that it must "spill over." Memo- 
rize chapter and verse for ready access, but show 
the actual Bible words to those you try to 
help. 

I often lend my Bible to do its own missionary 
work. It is interleaved, and on the blank pages I 
have written opposite the text anything I have 
learned that throws light upon it. 

When a word or so will explain I make marginal 
notes. For example, near the reference to "dead 
works" I wrote, "Prayer without faith, praise with- 
out sincerity, charity without love." Opposite 
"Beware of dogs" I wrote: "Jews dogging Paul's 
footsteps to contradict his teaching," etc. 

For the sake of life and freshness combine plans. 

141 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

A little child was asked, "Why do we pray for daily 
bread?" "We want it fresh," she said. 

Warmed-over experiences have little power. 
"Sing unto the Lord a new song." 

How do we get the best results? No truth ever 
becomes real to you until you try to practise it. 
Those who see what the Bible teaches and do not 
carry it out lose their power of seeing it. 

Pascal said : "Human knowledge must be under- 
stood in order to be loved, divine knowledge must 
be loved to be understood." Let your object in 
studying be how to live and to please God. 

Some one has noted that the best method is the 

"baby method." Come to it in a childlike frame of 

mind, recognizing your ignorance, willing to be 

taught. Say "Father, I am Thy child. Teach me." 

Study it as in God's presence. Claim every plain 

promise, try to obey promptly, joyously, every plain 

command, and you will know surely that nothing 

can happen to separate you from a love that is 

tenderer than mother-love and father-love and 

lover-love all in one, and powerful to protect you 

from all evil forever and forever ! 

142 



HOW SHALL WE SPEND SUNDAY? 




CHAPTER X 

HOW SHALL WE SPEND SUNDAY? 

jOST, Strayed, or Stolen — the Sun- 
day out of the week! Any one re- 
storing the same will be generously 
rewarded." 

I have been searching the Bible to learn God's 
thoughts about keeping the Sabbath, for it seems that 
we Americans are fast losing the blessing of the day. 
The Continental observance begins, at least, by at- 
tendance at church. You young folks must not com- 
mence life with low standards. What are we going 
to do with this question ? 

"If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, 
from doing thy pleasure on My holy day ; and call 
the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honora- 
ble ; and shalt honor Him, not doing thine own ways, 
nor finding thine own pleasures, nor speaking thine 
own words : then shalt thou delight thyself in the 
Lord" (Isaiah lviii: 13, 14). 

145 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Then follows the promise of rewards and honors 
here and hereafter. This seems to call for a radical 
change from the usual, every-day life — but it is, 
evidently, to be a delightful day. 

Let us settle it with ourselves at once and forever 
that God loves us and wants us to be happy, and 
He who created us knows what will make us so. 
The day, then, is to be different from ordinary days, 
and we are to turn from our ideas of pleasure to 
try His. The result will be that we shall "call the 
Sabbath a delight." He surely would not have us 
call it so if we did not think it. How shall we make 
it true? 

I do not believe for a moment that God's ideal 
is the Puritan Sunday — though He may approve 
such self-denial for His sake. I always sympathized 
with that poor child to whom Heaven had been pic- 
tured as a place "where Sabbaths never end," and 
who asked if God would not let her go down to 
Hell and play a little while on Saturday afternoons ! 

A Scotchman, returning home after long absence, 
was shocked at the changes he found. "The peo- 
ple," he said, "used to be reserved and solemn on the 

146 



HOW SHALL WE SPEND STJNDAYP 

Sabbath, but now they look as happy on that day as 
on any other !" Such views are perversions such 
as were those that prevailed among the Jews of 
Christ's day, arousing His vigorous protest by pre- 
cept and example. Geikie says that rules were pre- 
scribed as to the kind of knots that might be tied 
on the Sabbath. Those which might be tied with 
one hand were permissible. It was forbidden to 
write two consecutive letters, except in road-dust, 
sand, or anything in which the writing could not 
remain. To wear shoes with nails in them was un- 
lawful, because it was carrying a burden. 

In an insincere age such excessive rules led to 
evasions. To make it lawful to eat together on 
the Sabbath, the Rabbis put a chain across the street 
and called the two opposite houses a single dwelling. 

Christians, too, have not been above "chasing the 
devil around the stump." I once saw in the London 
Punch a picture of a small boy going through ex- 
cited antics with a pillow. One of two ladies sitting 
near by explained to the other : "As he cannot have 
his ball on Sunday we let him kick the sofa-cushion 
for amusement." 

147 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Now Christ claimed to be "Lord of the Sabbath 
day" — the supreme authority concerning it, and 
proclaimed "the Sabbath was made for man, not 
man for the Sabbath." In a sentence He cast off 
the fetters of slavish obedience to the letter of the 
law for His followers. 

It was made for man because he needed it — 
physically and spiritually. The Sabbath is the means 
to an end. God wants to tell us the secrets of eternal 
happiness, and, without doing violence to our wills, 
to win us to learn them. So He planned the oppor- 
tunity. 

First, we must be rested enough in mind and body 
to be able to apprehend His messages. Sabbath 
means rest. The harness of life may be put off, and 
refreshment comes with change of thought. 

Then God must draw us away, too, from our usual 

occupations which are necessarily engrossing — 

even from our usual pleasures — to get us to listen 

to Him, as a child must be called from his play to 

learn to read. The child has no appreciation of the 

joys to which reading will introduce him, nor of its 

importance in his future ; but the parent has, and, 

148 



HOW SHALL WE SPEND SUNDAY? 

though wishing to make it a pleasure, insists that he 
must learn. A little fellow whom I knew explained 
to his mother, "I don't want to learn to read, and 
besides, you can always read to me !" We are often 
not much wiser about our future interests. 

Strange as it may seem, we may rob ourselves. 
If we defraud the body of its rest at night we lose 
our buoyancy, then see things through blue specta- 
cles, and finally fall ill. And God, besides giving us 
the nightly renewal of our vitality, has made both 
body and soul dependent upon a weekly rest and 
refreshment. We require to be wound up once a 
week like an eight-day clock. During the French 
Revolution they tried observing only every tenth day 
as a day of rest, but the beasts of burden died and 
the experiment was a failure. 

The law in the Fourth Commandment was never 

repealed, but, authorized by the disciples and their 

immediate followers, the first day of the week 

replaced the seventh-day Sabbath, and has been 

observed by nineteen centuries of Christians as the 

one-seventh of their time set aside in memory of the 

joyful event of our Lord's resurrection. 

149 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Sunday is our holy day — not "holiday." How 
shall we spend it? Let us resolve, first of all, to 
make it a glad day, a happy day to ourselves and 
for those whose lives touch ours — and let me tell 
you that there is nothing gladder than the sense of 
being in right and loving relations with God and 
helping others toward that beatific condition. God 
does not want slave service, but free. How should 
we feel if those whom we love regarded all relations 
with us as "duty-work"? 

The life and teachings of Christ are our "Com- 
mentary" on the Fourth Commandment, so let us 
see how our Lord spent the Sabbath. We find that 
He attended the synagogue "as His custom was." 

"Are you going to church ?" I once asked a man. 

"No, I am going for a walk. I prefer hearing 
'sermons in stones' to hearing sticks preach." 

If he listened for the sermons of the stones he 
doubtless was profited, but I could not help con- 
trasting him with our physician, who knelt by my 
side later in the church where an indubitable "stick" 
preached. This physician is a man of splendid intel- 
lect, of great breadth and sweetness of nature. I 

150 



HOW SHALL WE SPEND SUNDAY? 

could not help overhearing his prayers, which were 
said in such reverence, such humility, as to suggest 
that the great loving Father was being spoken to by 
one of the least of those for whom He deigned to 
care. There was the perfect confidence of a child. 
He was apparently unconscious that he was not all 
alone in the august presence of his loving Maker. I 
confess to have listened — it was a lesson in prayer 
which his great soul would not have grudged to my 
little one, I felt sure. That was worship. 

Don't go to church as an act of righteousness to 
be laid up to your credit as so much funded virtue, 
but to do God honor in His sight and in that of 
other people, really to worship, to be in His presence 
and to learn what you can. Pray the prayers. Let 
real worship and praise be offered by your heart in 
singing the hymns and chants — the words are often 
directly spoken to God, not about Him. If you do 
not mean what is said in them, don't say it. 

Habit is such a wonderful force. Once formed we 
need scarcely use any will-power. If you go to 
church irregularly you will ask yourself each Sun- 
day whether you want to go, or if there is not some 

15* 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

reason why you need not. If you form the habit of 
going, as a matter of course, rain or shine, there will 
be no conflict. Turn a deaf ear to excuses calling 
themselves reasons. Test them by whether you 
think that God would admit them. "Could ye not 
not watch with Me one hour ?" 

Sometimes the clergyman's prayers or those of 
the church ritual do not seem just what we want 
to say. They ask for things that we ought to want 
but are not our needs of the moment. 

We feel like the little boy who after praying for 
"Papa and Mamma and Grandma" — being gently 
prompted by his mother — "and Aunt Louisa ?" con- 
tinued after a pause : "You can bless Aunt Louisa if 
you want to, but you needn't do it on my account I" 
Never mind, let us pray for "Aunt Louisa" and for 
all the people and things that we ought to care 
about. Once a week it is good to forget self long 
enough to join in the petitions for others, including 
an ever broader and broader circle, and feel our- 
selves one of God's great family that embraces all 
the race. 

A suggestion is given by St. Peter to the Corin- 

152 



HOW SHALL WE SPEND SUNDAY? 

thian church about Sunday, in speaking of collec- 
tions for the poor believers (for "saints" meant just 
that in his usage) : "Upon the first day of the week 
let every one of you lay by him in store, as God 
hath prospered him." 

Our giving should be a secret between God and 
our own hearts ; so if we have little "let us do our 
diligence gladly to give of that little" — if much, 
we shall never repent generosity. 

Only when we give purely for the sake of example 
may we let those at our left hand know what our 
right hand is doing. 

Another feature of Christ's Sabbaths was His 
teaching the people. There is nothing that helps us 
to grow in goodness like trying to help others to be 
good. Every Christian is in duty bound to pass on 
the "good news." "As My Father hath sent Me, 
even so send I you." 

A class in Sunday school is the most developing, 
helpful means I know to a girl's growth in noble 
womanhood. You need have small knowledge of 
Bible lore to teach little children, but you will be 
stimulated to learn. I was once asked to take a class 

»53 



THE BOAD TO HAPPINESS 

of boys. I said in excuse : "I don't know anything 
about boys. I have a small one of my own who is a 
problem." 

"Well, come and practise on other people's boys !" 
was the reply. So you girls, who are the mothers of 
the future, may go and do likewise! 

Christ said, "It is lawful to do well (that is, good) 
upon the Sabbath day/' and we find that He spent it 
in works of kindness and mercy. One of our ac- 
cessible opportunities to follow in His steps is to 
visit a hospital, either to amuse the little children 
or to show sympathy and kindness to some lonely 
woman. There are always some too far from home 
to have their friends come to them, while other 
beds are surrounded with visitors on Sunday af- 
ternoons. 

Take a magazine or some trifle to offer by way 
of introduction. Begin with a sympathetic hearing 
of their troubles and gradually lead their thoughts 
into cheerful channels. If possible, make them laugh 
at some good story before you leave. If you have 
anything warmer than ice-water in your veins you 
will go away happier than you came. 

iS4 



HOW SHALL WE SPEND STJNDAYP 

How about your pleasures? Don't "give them 
up," but "crowd them out" by another kind of 
pleasure. Don't puzzle over whether this is wrong 
or that. Fill your day so full of things which you 
know are right that there will be no time for the 
questionable ones, nor for temptation to get a hear- 
ing. The transition is so easy — if "this" is not 
wrong, why is "that" right? When you are hon- 
estly puzzled ask God's direction. Circumstances 
alter cases. Those who have only Sunday for rec- 
reation will not be judged, I feel sure, by the same 
rule as will those of us who have other opportunities 
for pleasure. 

It has been the fashion for young men to spend 
Sunday afternoons in calling upon their girl friends. 
Of course the girls' thoughts run upon what they 
will wear, who will come, what they shall talk about, 
etc. I know one bright, popular girl who says to 
her men friends : 

"I am at home every afternoon at five, except 
Sunday, when I go to church, and Saturday, when 
some pleasure is apt to turn up that I don't want to 
miss." I could tell you of the advantage this has 

i55 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

given her over the other girls — but this is not a 
love story. 

I heard another girl exclaim to a friend: "Don't 
imagine that you know what fun is until you have 
tried playing Providence to people!" She had in 
girlish fashion expressed a great truth. 

Without money you may do a world of good, but 
you will never find it out until you begin, nor how 
happiness is found in making others happy. 

"Is that a Sunday book?" I heard one child ask 
another. 

"Yes, it is the Sunday-est kind of Sunday book," 
was the reply. 

"What is a Sunday book ?" I asked. 

"One that make you want to be good," he an- 
swered. 

When I was a very young girl I decided that I 
would not read novels on Sunday. I was thus forced 
to find other reading matter, and I read books that I 
should never otherwise have seen. These intro- 
duced me to pleasures and people that have given me 
some of the happiest hours of my life. Anything 
given up for God looks like loss at first, but He 

iS6 



HOW SHALL WE SPEND SUNDAYP 

knows how to make it up to us — oh, so wonder- 
fully! 

Again — if you will pardon personalities — dur- 
ing my early girlhood, when we were visiting Baden- 
Baden, my uncle came one Sunday evening to take 
me to see a fine display of fireworks. I was trying 
very hard not to illustrate the proverb, "It is a poor 
religion that cannot travel," and excused myself. 
Later, a rocket flashed past the window and I rushed 
excitedly to see it. My uncle sneered at the dis- 
tinction between "tweedle-dum" and "tweedle-dee." 
It is bitter to youth to be considered narrow, per- 
haps partly believing the charge, but, mistaken or 
not, I took my stand with considerable self-denial. 
The result was that this same relative came to me 
thereafter in his spiritual difficulties, which opened 
opportunities of helpfulness. 

There is help and inspiration in the thought of 
new beginnings. To separate old failures or partial 
successes from the completer success which we never 
get tired of expecting — to sponge the blurred slate 
clean and begin again — is one of the ministries of 
Sunday. 

157 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Happy Sundays were the rule in one household 
that I knew as a child. On pleasant summer morn- 
ings the light breakfast was served on the piazza, 
and often luncheon or afternoon tea was taken picnic 
fashion in the woods. The children's usual toys 
were laid aside (as an object-lesson), and in their 
stead many things were supplied to interest them; 
among others, a microscope to reveal Nature's 
marvels and God's care for every minute creature. 

They gathered daisies and hardy wild-flowers to 
be sent to the city hospitals. They made scrap- 
books for the children's wards. They played games 
— young and old together — that tested familiarity 
with the Bible. They knew dozens of them. Ques- 
tions might lack interest in Sunday school, but when 
they were written on slips of paper, drawn at hap- 
hazard from a basket, and the answers written like 
a game of conundrums, it was quite a different thing. 
They gathered leaves and, pinning each to a paper, 
passed them around. The one who named correctly 
the greatest number was crowned with a wreath of 
leaves. 

Some lonely person was often made welcome at 

158 



HOW SHALL WE SPEND STJNDAYP 

their table as "God's guest." Without waiting for 
Sunday to relieve cases of need they usually carried 
some little benefaction or tried to put some added 
brightness into the lot of those less favored than 
themselves on that day. You may possibly find sug- 
gestions in these reminiscences. 

Now, what will you do with next Sunday ? 

Many years ago I read a book in which the char- 
acters were, "Bona" — the good self ; "Mala" — the 
bad self; and "I" — the real self, the deciding voice 
whose will was law. Let your best self rule. Mil- 
lions of years hence you will still be You and will 
care how you spent "earth's little while." 



»59 



LOVE — THE TEST OF 
DISCIPLESHIP 




CHAPTER XI 

LOVE — THE TEST OF DISCIPLESHIP 

IN all this wide world there is no such 
happiness as that to be found in lov- 
ing ! Even being loved holds no such 
joy. Our Father knowing this, His 
object for us is first that we shall love Him and 
then that we shall love each other. Study His 
planning for this latter good: the interdependence 
of rich and poor, the variously distributed gifts and 
talents, each supplementing the other's lack. The 
weak lean on the strong and the strong are moved 
to tenderness in supporting the weak. "He sets the 
inhabitants of the earth in families" -7- each a little 
world in itself, pledged to love and helpfulness. 
"Blood is thicker than water." 

In clans, tribes, and nations He educates the sense 
of brotherhood, and as we rise to higher levels in 
understanding His will, 

"The world is all our neighbor, 
The stars are foreign lands." 
163 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

The second commandment is "like unto" the first 
— the love of our brother an evidence of our love 
for our Father. 

Do you know the eleventh commandment ? Christ 
says : "A new commandment give I unto you, that 
ye love one another." But, you say, "Love will 
not be commanded nor forced. We cannot love 
sometimes even when we want to !" And yet Christ 
makes it the test of discipleship : "By this shall all 
men know that ye are My disciples — if ye have 
love one to another." He who knows us through 
and through would not ask an impossibility. 

Let us try to understand just what our Lord 
meant. 

An eminent clergyman once told me that theolo- 
gians distinguish between the "love of benevolence" 
which God requires from us for all His other chil- 
dren, all mankind, and the "love of complacency," 
which is our feeling for those who awake the glad 
response of our hearts — in short, what we our- 
selves call love. 

This "love of benevolence" means "good will to 

man." If I have it I feel kindly, do justly, lend a 

164 



LOVE-THE TEST OF DISOIFLESHIF 

— mi i n ■ 

hand when possible, I am glad in the happiness of 
others, sympathetic for their troubles. I will never 
strengthen a prejudice or confirm a dislike by any- 
thing I say or do, or even look. I will be patient, 
forbearing, forgiving, gentle in judgment, consid- 
erate, compassionate. These prove the love that 
proves the disciple. 

A child "going on eight" whom I know wrote a 
story, beginning: "There were once two little girls 
who were twins — one was seven and one was 
nine — — " "Twins ?" I exclaimed, but she dismissed 
the interruption, saying, "They were twins in every- 
thing except age!" — kindly explaining that they 
dressed alike. Just so are there many who are 
Christians "in everything except love" — which is 
as fundamental an impossibility as are twins of dif- 
ferent ages. 

It is said that St. John lived to be a hundred 
years old, and that in his extreme old age he used 
to be carried in his chair to the church to address 
the people, when his strength permitted him only 
to give the message which summed up all his heart 
would say : "Love ye one another." 

i65 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

In his matchless first letter to the Corinthian be- 
lievers St. Paul explains in the thirteenth chapter 
just what this love is; that without it, though he 
speak with the eloquence of an angel, his words 
were but as the blare of brass or the tinkle of a 
cymbal. 

A very clever, entertaining woman, who yet was a 
bit top-lofty, took a class of girls in a mission school. 
Endeavoring to illustrate the grace of unselfishness, 
she asked them what they supposed brought her 
from her pleasant home to teach them that rainy 
Sunday. 

"Well, some folks likes to hear themselves talk/' 
replied one young woman, pursing up her lips and 
looking over the teacher's head. The grain of truth 
made the retort a telling one. 

You who have the faculty of saying pleasant 
things to people — and meaning them, at the time 
at least — see to it that you speak as kindly of them 
as to them. 

Those who speak well of their fellows are always 

the best liked. When tempted to say anything that 

you would not have overheard by the person spoken 

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LOVE-THE TEST OP DISCIFLESHIF 

of, imagine him or her to be within earshot. You 
may so measure "the spirit ye are of." 

St. Paul continues that though gifted, learned, 
possessed of such faith as could even work miracles, 
though we impoverish ourselves for the poor — if 
our motives have no love in them they count as 
nothing — that if we could go to God through mar- 
tyrdom, carrying with us an unloving spirit we 
should have no welcome. 

St. Paul leaves us without excuse for not know- 
ing just how to show this love that God so prizes. 
It "suffers long, and is kind." Can you imagine any 
higher attainment ? It is overcoming evil with good 
— quite the most delightful revenge possible and 
the only one recommended in Holy Writ. Love 
"envieth not." Love and envy cannot exist together. 
Envy is the parent of anger, malice, and all un- 
charitableness. Girls are most apt, I think, to be 
envious of each other's clothes; women of social 
position. A very pretty girl attending her first 
large dance, while in the dressing-room found that 
in the excitement of preparation she had omitted to 

put on a string of pearls, her indulgent father's 

167 



THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

gift at her debut. Turning to her maid, she said in 
dismay : "Oh, I have forgotten my pearls !" Where- 
upon she overheard a young woman near her say to 
another : "I wonder if she hasn't forgotten her tiara 
of diamonds !" The words cut so deep that it was 
long before she could feel any pleasure in that to 
which she had looked so eagerly forward. 

Apropos of social envy. Three generations ago a 
certain man, clever, rough, of humble birth, made an 
enormous fortune. His children when emerging 
from obscurity were well educated, and social recog- 
nition was slowly accorded them. People (cads?) 
apologized to one another for being at their enter- 
tainments. The third generation, not only refined 
but also with all the attributes of gentlehood, be- 
came leaders in the fashionable world. All the old 
stories about the grandfather were forgotten by 
their friends, but are still in active circulation among 
those who have not the entree to their houses, and 
who remark cynically: "None remember the grub 
in the butterfly." If I give illustrations it is be- 
cause I think that the spirit of the teaching is more 

readily caught and lodges better in memory, in the 

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LOVE-THE TEST OF DISCIPLESHIP 

setting of a story. It is like seeing a machine in 
operation after its workings have been explained. 
Our Saviour's example, too, indorses the method — 
so there is my permission. 

Love "vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." 
St. Paul says elsewhere, "Let each esteem another 
better than himself." This is the perfection of 
courtesy, the humility that belongs to the great and 
the lovable. 

In Paris, a French mother and daughter, calling 
upon some American friends of mine, asked whether 
the daughter of the family had any musical skill. 
The girl happened to be a remarkable musician, 
but when asked to play, interpreted a very simple 
composition with taste. The French daughter then 
played a very difficult piece of music somewhat 
faultily. 

After their visitors' departure the mother asked, 

"Why did you select that simple little thing?" "I 

did not know how proficient that French girl might 

be," she replied, "and think how uncomfortable she 

would have been at playing a little piece after I had 

played something difficult !" 

169 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

In the Syriac version of the Bible, of which I have 
seen a translation, the "love chapter" is very beauti- 
ful, and where in English we have "doth not behave 
itself unseemly/' it is there "doth nothing that caus- 
eth shame" — which seems a little clearer in relation 
to love for our fellows. 

There are practical jokes and forms of teasing 
that come under this head. For example. At a 
certain popular resort it is the habit for the guests 
of the hotel to assemble at the arrival of the mail, 
the names are called aloud and the letters delivered. 
One lady — a typical old maid, and for ten years an 
habituee of the place — had always occupied the 
same seat in the room at "mail call" and seemed to 
take an innocent pleasure in it. Some young men, 
on mischief bent, made it a point on several consecu- 
tive days to occupy her chair and those in its vicinity 
— just to tease and see what she would do. 

The poor woman was deeply hurt — it seemed a 

gratuitous insult to her who had harmed nobody. 

Her discomfiture was the subject of remark and 

curiosity, and she knew it. It was "unseemly," it 

caused shame. "A small unkindness is a great 

170 



LOVE-THE TEST OF DISOIPLESHIP 

offence." William Dean Howells says : "It is a part 
of my religion never to hurt any one's feelings/' 

Love "seeketh not her own." This is unselfish- 
ness. To give up one's own way for love's sake, to 
take no unjust or unkind advantage for one's self, 
is to grow in this grace. Selfishness is blind to its 
own existence, but like the ostrich hiding its head 
it is quite visible to every one else. 

Two children were given a pair of rabbits, and one 
morning the little girl, paying them an early visit, 
found one dead. Returning to the house she re- 
marked demurely : "Isn't it too bad — Willie's rabbit 
is dead !" A few minutes later Willie appeared and 
shouted to his sister: "Hello, Mary, your rabbit's 
dead!" 

One contemptible form of selfishness is the repeat- 
ing of unkind things said of some one, in order to 
tell "what we said" as the champion of the absent. 

Love "is not easily provoked." It makes al- 
lowances, tries to look below the mere surface 
words, and opposes to the temptation to resentment 
thoughts of love and consideration for the one 

giving the provocation. 

171 



THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

Do you remember the old story of the contagion 
of the spirit of one easily provoked? The husband 
vents his irritation upon his wife, the wife is cross 
with the children, the children are naughty with 
the servant, and the servant kicks the cat ! 

Again, love "thinketh (imputeth) no evil." A 

friend said to me : "Mrs. B is a very attractive 

woman, but in spite of her wealth she has some 
curiously parsimonious ways. I overheard her tell 
the butler to bring the eggs up to her bedroom when 
they came that she might count them !" 

Fortunately I could explain that the eggs were 
sent by the gardener at her country-place, who 
owned the hens, and as he never would send any bill 
she wished to make sure of the correct number 
before any one had access to them. A really 
conscientious act was construed into a mean 
one. 

Love "rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in 

the truth." This reminds one of the elder brother in 

the parable of the prodigal. He stayed outside the 

door and sulked instead of going in and having a 

good time — and the dear old father actually came 

172 



LOVE-THE TEST OF DISCIPLESHIP 

out and "entreated" him, assuring him of his love 
and that his interests should not suffer by the 
brother's return. 

Certainly it seems as though the drunken spend- 
thrift, when penitent, were a better man than the 
acid Christian. 

Those who say, "I told you so," after having pre- 
dicted failure, are usually secretly rather pleased 
that the outcome justified their anticipations of 
evil. Doubtless that "sour-souled" elder brother 
had often said that the other "would come to no 
good." 

Love "beareth all things." What has not been 
borne for love's sake! — and love lightens every 
burden. 

Love "believeth all things." The cannibals think 
that the strength of the dead man passes into the 
living one who eats him. To be believed in seems to 
work some such miraculous transfer of nerve and 
courage and buoyant strength that bends circum- 
stances to our will. I once overheard in a car a 
querulous voice say: "You'll make a fizzle of it — 
see if you don't." "Nonsense !" said a hearty one. 

173 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

"Go in and win, my boy. You've got the stuff in 
you that succeeds. Good luck to you !" 

St. Paul reaches his climax in proclaiming that 
love outranks all the virtues — even faith. "The 
greatest of these is love." 

There is an old proverb that holds a truth of tre- 
mendous importance ; but through putting the word 
"charity" for "love," after the manner of our older 
version of the Bible — the meaning of the word hav- 
ing changed through misuse — the proverb is often 
misunderstood. "Charity begins at home" has but a 
secondary reference to almsgiving, but does teach 
that love's first allegiance, duty, and obligation are 
toward those whom God has bound up with us in the 
same family. 

It was said, jestingly, of Louisa Alcott that her 
devotion to her family was so great that 

" She'd grind her bones to make them bread." 

George Eliot writes : "It is more needful that my 
heart should swell with loving admiration at some 
trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who 
sit at the same hearth with me than at the deeds 

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LOVE-THE TEST OF DISCIPLESHIP 

of heroes whom I shall never know except by hear- 
say." 

Ponder the love-worthy qualities of those about 
you, rehearse them often to yourself — you don't 
know what a help it is in fostering love. 

Pray for those whom you do not love, and force 
yourself to do them little kindnesses. You thus 
put yourself in the way of one of God's laws, and 
they always work towards success. It is also a 
great help towards loving people to try to make them 
love us. 

There is nothing more contemptible than to have 
"company manners" and handle our own — those 
who love us best — without gloves. 

" Only a word, but it blotted — 
The sunshine all out of the day " — 

is full of pathos. 

"In love and friendship, small, steady payments 
on a gold basis are better than enormous promissory 
notes." If you want to be loved, give love, live 
love. 

"The Lord is loving unto every man." How shall 
the hearts of men be won to believe it? Human 

175 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

lives must show the will to give and bless and by 
their deeds teach 

" The love of love, the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn." 

In the sharing of joy and the bearing of trouble 
may we remember our kinship with all men. 



176 



WHY DO WE HAVE TROUBLE? 




CHAPTER XII 

WHY DO WE HAVE TROUBLE? 

!IFE is like the weather. We have 
our sad days and bad days and glad 
days, shower and shine. Seemingly, 
nothing is so uncertain as the weather, 
and yet some great law is at work for good, cover- 
ing the earth with beauty and nourishing it into 
fruitfulness. Unbroken sunshine would make it a 
desert — and "we come to June by way of March." 

God is the supreme arbiter. A princess may not 
command the sunshine for her wedding-day, and 
the beggar may bask in its cheer. We are God's 
family of little children, and to each one of us He 
gives what is best — and yet when trouble comes we 
are all inclined to cry out, "If God loves us, why 
does He let us suffer?" 

Imagine yourself a mother with a family of little 
ones to train for life and eternity. You would love 
them too well to risk their happiness. You would 

179 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

deny them their way when you knew that it was for 
their good. You would hold them relentlessly to 
the daily duty of school life for ten years or more. 
To teach them the joy of doing right, and that 
wrong actions bring sorrow, you would reward and 
punish — the punishment being dictated just as 
much by love as are the rewards. Never believe that 
trial in any form is punishment sent by God in anger 
or displeasure. 

In one of Miss Alcott's charming stories the Pro- 
fessor — the husband of the immortal "Jo" — had 
done all in his power to cure his orphan nephew of 
lying. Finally, upon the sin's being repeated he 
called the boy to his room, locked the door, and 
handing him a whip commanded him to use it upon 
him, his benefactor. The lad, horrified, laid the 
blows on lightly. 

"Harder!" says the Professor, and again, 
"Harder!" It was too much! The boy threw 
the whip to the farthest corner of the room and 
burst into penitent tears. 

It makes us think of One who submitted Himself 

to the scourging of the men for whose sins He was 

1 80 



WHY DO WE HAVE TROUBLEP 

the willing victim. God and good parents do not 
punish ; they discipline, intending not only to eradi- 
cate evil but also to develop good. 

I knew a young man, the eldest of a large family, 
whose father put him through a rigorous training, 
having seen in him the qualities that would fit him 
to be his own worthy successor as head of the family. 
The poor fellow was sometimes so tired out that 
when taking the midnight boat home he sought the 
darkest corner of the vessel and let the tears roll 
down his cheeks from sheer fatigue. The boy is 
now an honored, wealthy man — I do not know a 
happier — the family oracle, and adored by his 
brothers and sisters. The hardness lasted but long 
enough to teach and develop him. God assigned a 
bitter discipline to our "Elder Brother" for our 
sakes. "He that spared not His own Son . . . 
how shall He not with Him freely give us all 
things ?" 

The little child runs to his mother with bumped 

head or hurt finger to have her "kiss the place to 

make it well. ,, The magic all lies in the comfort of 

the assurance of her love and sympathy. There is 

181 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

nothing that takes the sting out of trouble and 
soothes our hurt like the belief in God's love and 
pity. "He doth not willingly afflict or (even) grieve 
the children of men." "In all their afflictions He 
was afflicted. ,, 

For some inscrutable reason Love and Suffering, 
the supreme emotions, are required to teach the 
deepest lessons. They are the birth-pangs of the 
soul's life. We need both. We begin life with mere 
consciousness; we are to be trained into God-like- 
ness. And we shall think it worth while some 
day! 

Does it seem as though the light of your life had 
gone out because one whom you love has "gone 
before"? I will not mock your grief with pious 
phrases, but oh, whatever other thoughts you have, 
hug to your heart the truth that God loves you. Let 
no one, let nothing rob you of that. That tender 
Father has your dear one in His keeping, whom He 
is making supremely, rapturously happy at this mo- 
ment — no more pain, no fear, no risk, no rivalry, 
no hate ; vast fields of knowledge, glorified intellects, 

permanent happiness. 

182 



WHY DO WE HAVE TROUBLEP 

If your eyes could follow the beloved one you 
could not wait to go too. He or she is not for- 
getting you in the new-found rapture — love and 
life are fuller than ever before — but time passes 
quickly when we are happy here and in the 
"eternal now" there is probably no impatient 
waiting. 

" God nothing does, nor suffers to be done, 
But what thou wouldst thyself, if thou couldst see 
Through all events and time as well as He." 

I once saw a mother who had lost her only child 
look up with eyes streaming with tears and say with 
the deepest sincerity of tone that I have ever heard : 
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him/' It 
was not a mere moment of exaltation. She lived 
it. Do you not think God was proud of the love that 
could trust and cling to Him like that ? 

Sickness — long, painful, prolonged illness — is 
said to be the hardest of trials. It is the testimony 
of the book of Job. You seem to have lost yourself 
and can no longer depend upon the old familiar 
body. There is humiliation in the dependence, the 
helplessness and hopelessness that tax the patience 

183 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

of others. I, who am well, feel unworthy to try to 
help you bear it. It is like 

"The butterfly upon the road 
Preaching contentment to the toad." 

I only want to assure you that God never wasted 
human suffering, never needlessly imposed it. He 
has a purpose for you. "Lie still and let Him 
mould you." You can do more for Him than an 
angel can. Hereafter we may praise and serve 
Him. Only here He asks us to suffer for Him — 
knowing that it is the most searching and effective 
of medicines for sick souls ; but if He is our Physi- 
cian He will not fail to restore us to health and 
happiness. 

In the long, sleepless nights He is watching with 
you. "He that keepeth thee will not slumber." If 
a sparrow cannot fall unnoticed you may be sure 
that your nervous wretchedness has His tenderest 
sympathy. I know mother-hearts, and they cannot 
outdo their Creator in their deepest, noblest powers 
of loving. "Now hath God bound thy trouble upon 
thee, with intent to test thee, but with purpose to 

reward and crown thee." "It is the preparation of 

184 



WHY DO WE HAVE TROtJBLEP 

the Father/' "He that hath suffered most hath most 
to give" — sympathy, comprehension, tolerance, 
tenderness. 

I once saw a gardener cutting back the roses. 
Nothing was left but dry-looking twigs, but he ex- 
plained that the process forced all the strength of the 
plant to the roots, which later nourished wonderful 
flowers, more glorious than any one could have 
dreamed who saw the modest blossoms of the 
former plant. 

Is your trouble one for which you are in no way to 
blame? It is a mystery why the innocent so often 
suffer with the guilty and even instead of them. We 
are so bound up by love for each other in families 
and friendships that we must perforce bear one 
another's burdens. Ah, let those to whom disgrace 
or destitution has come through another's fault 
think of the One who suffered at Gethsemane and 
Calvary, the innocent for the guilty. Surely He 
knows how hard it is, and is near you in love and 
pity. However it may seem to come through others' 
fault or sin — by the time that it reaches you it is 
God's will for you. I suppose that medicine must be 

185 



THE BOAD TO HAPPINESS 

medicine in the hands of the great Healer, but He 
never makes mistakes. 

Is your trouble one of which you can speak to 
no one ? Ah, that is the hardest kind ! I said that 
before, but there are so many hardest kinds ! Only 
those in God's highest classes are given the hardest 
lessons. Would you go back to the primary depart- 
ment because the tasks are easy and do not call upon 
your highest powers and efforts? Sometimes you 
would, doubtless. Even the brave, buoyant Paul's 
courage faltered, and Christ asked that "the cup 
might pass from Him." But Commencement Day 
is coming and you must graduate with honors ! 

Bushnell wrote a wonderful sermon entitled 
"Every Man's Life a Plan of God." He says that 
God has an ideal for each one of us, formed upon 
what He knows we may attain — for each a different 
one — rooted in our personality. This He pro- 
ceeds to develop by the circumstances, happy and 
unhappy, of our lives. If we refuse the highest, He 
aims at the next best for us, and so on until all 
possibility for good is lost, when He uses us as a 

warning — like Pharaoh and Judas. 

186 



WHY DO WE HAVE TROUBLE? 

I once met a woman who said to me : "We loved 
our father and were sure that he loved us, but he 
never gave his reasons. His word was law. It has 
been the greatest help in understanding God's deal- 
ings and accepting them with unquestioning faith in 
His love and wisdom." God does not give His 
reasons, but He assures us : "What I do thou 
knowest not now, but thou shalt know here- 
after." 

Sometimes our trouble comes through the sorrows 
of those we love. What primrose paths we should 
choose for the dear feet to tread had we the power ! 
— and so rob them of the strength and pluck and 
joy of victory, born of overcoming. 

A friend told me that she was once watching the 
struggles of a large moth to emerge from the chrys- 
alis. He stretched and strained until apparently ex- 
hausted in the effort. One single ligament seemed 
to hold him prisoner, baffling all endeavor to escape. 
My friend then took her scissors and snipped the 
little barrier, whereupon the moth emerged, but 
dragging one wing. Her mistaken kindness had 

condemned the poor creature to crawl all his little 

187 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

life instead of winging his joyful way. God may 
be trusted. 

But He is even sorrier for our sins than for our 
sufferings. They are the poisonous source of most 
troubles. Are you suffering because you have 
sinned? Be glad that you can suffer. It is an 
expiation, in so far as it is an evidence of repent- 
ance — God's only condition of forgiveness. 

You cannot sin yourself out of God's love and pity 
and wish to pardon. Phillips Brooks said: "You 
have only to believe about God what Christ re- 
vealed." He is the only One who, we may be sure, 
had the right idea of God — and He never shrank 
from the vilest persons who ever approached Him — 
but lovingly enjoined them to "Go, and sin no more." 

There are forces within us, evil things that lie 

latent until temptation brings them to light. If we 

overcome we have gained a great victory and are 

stronger, nobler than before the test. If we fall we 

are revealed to ourselves — we know where we are 

weak. We are taught humility — we may learn the 

pardoning love of God that makes Him dearer than 

anything else. Better have the bad in us come out 

188 



WHY DO WE HAVE TROUBLEP 

— like the measles — than remain in us to corrupt 
the nature. To quote Bishop Brooks again: "The 
only sure way of getting rid of a past is by getting a 
future out of it." 

There is a penalty attached to wrong-doing — 
call it punishment or what you will — as there is to 
the breaking of physical laws. God does not inter- 
fere if we put our finger in the fire — it will be 
burned. 

I have seen a boy deliberately shirk duty and be 
overwhelmed by the cares and responsibilities of 
later life, having had no apprenticeship. I have 
seen girls idle and frivolous at school, and thus un- 
fitted for the positions occupied later by their fel- 
lows, which they keenly resented. 

Those who have not known great sorrows perhaps 
admit lightly that "trouble must be good for people, ,, 
since the loveliest ones they know are usually those 
who have suffered deeply ; but they cannot see how 
nagging little cares, annoyances, disappointments, 
denials of their wishes can do them good. 

We are all nearing the time when nothing but 

character counts, and this training in the little trials 

189 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

of daily life is the rehearsal for the greater tests 
sent for our development. They will help us to bear 
them, to suffer less in them. As we have learned 
through them we shall emerge baffled, broken, un- 
happy, with the lesson to learn over again — or 
strong, brave, triumphant with the self-knowledge 
that makes us trust God utterly, fearlessly. 

Little trials make the will pliable. The potter 
finds that unless he kneads the clay it becomes set, 
when it will take permanent form before he has 
brought it to its possibilities of beauty or usefulness. 
We become set — so set that we cannot even man- 
age ourselves. 

It is an awful thing to be selfish or sordid, for in- 
stance, and not know it. It is no secret from those 
who live with us, and our pettiness may be alienating 
little by little the affections that are making the 
warmth and sunshine of our little world. 

We need love and praise, peace and pleasantness, 
God knows, and disciplines only when necessary. 

"How is it that you are so well brought up?" I 

asked a little girl the other day — the only child of 

doting parents. Her eyes snapped and with a 

190 



WHY DO WE HAVE TROUBLEP 

demure smile she answered promptly, "Love and 
spanks !" 

I used to put my little boy into the bathtub when 
naughty. There was no water, but he was too little 
to climb out. Angrily he would shout or sulkily 
mutter : "I won't do so any more I" Still I kept him 
there until in a broken voice and with a penitent sob 
he repeated the promise. I listened for the tone of 
his voice, and when that was right I knew that the 
punishment had done its work. He was not hap- 
pier than I when I lifted him out, nor had he been 
more sorrowful except that "I saw the end while 
he only saw the way." 

As Wordsworth says : "Suffering has the nature 
of infinity." We cannot believe that we can ever 
be glad and joyous again. 

Perhaps God is listening for the "tones" of our 
lives. The moment they are right His ear will be 
quick to catch them. 

There is such a thing as conquering a trouble by 

accepting it. To rebel makes it harder. I know a 

little boy who when he is punished cuddles close to 

his mother and cries with his face pressed against 

191 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

hers. He vaguely feels that the love is there for him 
still. You may believe that her arm steals around 
him as soon as she dare show tenderness without 
undoing the work of the discipline. 

I want to leave two thoughts with you : first, that 
Trouble is a disguised guest, and however unwel- 
come leaves blessings in his wake if you will receive 
him. "No chastening for the present" is anything 
but "grievous." "Nevertheless afterward it yield- 
eth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that 
are exercised thereby." 

On the grounds of the Pallavicini Villa, at 
Genoa, you see before you what seems to be a work- 
man's hut embowered in foliage, dark, forbidding. 
You enter, thinking it an abode, but find it a mere 
passageway. On turning to look back you see the ex- 
quisite facade of a small Greek temple of purest mar- 
ble framed in masses of green leaves, and you know 
that it is but the other side of the same structure. 

And the second thought is : Be well assured that 
it is from no lack of love on the Father's part that 
trouble in any form has come to you. Did He not 
give to Nero a throne and to Christ a cross ? 

192 



THE ART OF LIVING WITH 
OTHERS 




CHAPTER XIII 

THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS 
"God setteth the solitary in families" 

E all want to be happy — some of 
us want to be good — so God has 
bound us up in families to insure 
both. The mutual dependence, the 
familiar memories, the joint possessions, the com- 
munity of interest, their very isolation in the minds 
of others — arousing naturally a feeling of identi- 
fication — all tend to the development of that affec- 
tion that is traditionally supposed to exist between 
the members of every family. 

Probably in no other way could so much tender- 
ness and consideration for others be realized; but, 
unfortunately, relationship is not a talisman for 
affection. They may all be possessed of noble traits, 
and may really care for each other, but they cannot 
bear the test of daily intimacy. Their faults and 

i9S 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

weaknesses jar upon one another, their tempers 
clash. 

Each individuality is an uncompromising fact and 
has to be taken into consideration, and though 
brothers and sisters owe identically the same debt to 
heredity, all the way back to Adam, they usually 
seem to have taken advantage of the wide choice 
offered them by the multitudinous family connection 
to inherit the most opposite traits and often most 
antagonistic dispositions. Where other relatives 
form part of the family — the husband's mother or 
the wife's sister — then the problem grows more 
complicated, and without the exercise of much tact 
dire confusion is the result. 

The home is indeed a miniature world and offers 
a field for the exercise of all the cardinal virtues. It 
is a sort of undress rehearsal for the larger life 
outside in all its complex relations. And so we 
come to see that the family life is not only for 
happiness but also for the development of char- 
acter. It is well to remember that we can do almost 
anything with ourselves, but little or nothing with 

others, except by our unconscious influence as a 

196 



THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS 

result of our efforts to make of ourselves what we 
ought to be. And this brings us to the considera- 
tion of one of the most fruitful sources of friction in 
family circles. 

It is the habit of expecting that others shall live 
up to our standards. We must realize that no two 
natures are alike, and each has a different way of 
thinking, acting, and living. Some persons seem 
to feel that no one is entitled to a place in the world 
but they and others just like them. There are peo- 
ple who seem to make even goodness hateful. 

Again, we should not expect of others what is not 
theirs to give. As well criticise a rose for not being 
so useful as the cabbage. God made butterflies as 
well as bees, and the world is the pleasanter place 
for Nature's infinite variety. These high ideals and 
standards of ours were given us to incite our own 
souls to a growth in perfection, but we misuse them 
when we divert them from their purpose, to measure 
others by. 

We may think the worst of each other and fix 

our attention upon what annoys us, but we may 

also think the best, and find ourselves surrounded 

197 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

only by agreeable people. Thinking well of people 
usually makes them anxious to be deserving of ap- 
probation, and supplies the incentive — not by occult 
principles, but plain, every-day common-sense. It 
is not gratified vanity but the assurance of sympathy 
and comprehension that all crave. I think that we 
may safely assume that we are all made up of 
mingled imperfections and genuine virtues, that 
every one is lovable when seen at his or her best, 
and it is good to remember that when we shall 
enter upon the eternal life that best side will become 
permanent. 

The same spirit of intolerance that exacts that 
others shall accept our rules of life and conduct, 
expresses itself quite as often in an attempt to 
foist upon others our own opinions and points of 
view. 

The elders are apt to dogmatize, denying to those 
less experienced any right to independent thought. 
They expect their conclusions to be accepted with- 
out question, forgetting that their correctness is not 
so evident to those whose minds have not passed 

through the same processes, and that every one — 

198 



THE ART OP LIVING WITH OTHERS 

young or old — rebels instinctively at coercion in 
such matters. 

The young people sometimes make the mistake 
of expressing thoughts or opinions of whose value 
they are assured because they are quoted from 
persons of recognized ability, but assuming the wis- 
dom as their own they do not give their authority, 
and so are listened to with little respect, since they 
themselves are known to have had no experience 
to entitle them to speak with assurance. 

An important rule for living happily and harmo- 
niously with others is to avoid altercation about 
trifles, especially to shun stock subjects of disputa- 
tion. Argument and warm discussion are apt to 
result chiefly in arousing pride of opinion and leave 
the disputants more positive in their own way of 
thinking than before. 

An old countrywoman once said that she tested 
her attainment of the "meek and quiet spirit" by 
putting to herself the question : 

"Can you contradiction bear, 
When you're right, and know you air ? " 

There was real wisdom shown, as well as edifica- 

199 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

tion gained, when two clergymen with widely dif- 
ferent views determined to compare notes first 
about the doctrines upon which they agreed, and 
this led to so kindly a feeling of brotherliness that 
they had no desire to discuss their points of dif- 
ference. 

A conciliatory manner and an evidently open- 
minded hospitality to the arguments of others will 
generally secure for us the same advantages; and 
a readiness to give up in little things with good 
grace, where no principle is involved, is the most 
tactful appeal possible for a courteous hearing at 
other times, when the matter may be of importance 
to us. "Peace at any price" is a good family motto. 

Another way of imposing our opinions is to offer 
advice unsolicited, which is often given at such 
length and with so much energy of feeling that all 
free agency seems lost to the one addressed. 

There is a great deal of criticism in the careless 
freedom of familiar intercourse that is not intention- 
ally unkind, but certainly superfluous and often 
irritating. Many a truth is spoken in jest which if 

spoken in earnest would be brutally rude. One is 

200 



THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS 

ashamed to complain, or betray that one is hurt, but 
much enduring in silence is liable to result in a 
chronic sensitiveness which is real suffering. 

There are few sins against good taste that are 
more detestable than for members of the same 
family to use their intimate knowledge of each 
other to make sport at their expense for the benefit 
of others. Boys, in particular, apparently have 
no feelings that any one is bound to respect, and 
so they grow hardened and cease to care whether 
they please or not. Much that passes for criticism 
might, with propriety, be called interference, and 
these self-constituted critics are generally the least 
patient of criticism when directed toward them- 
selves. What are known as "home truths" are 
usually the reverse of soothing, and good breeding 
bars out personalities always. 

The thought leads to the conclusion that one of 
the most important rules for making home happy, 
and one which covers much ground, is the observ- 
ance of courtesy. What makes the charm of polite 
society will do no less for the family life. We may 

speak more plainly but no less courteously to "our 

201 



THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

own" than to strangers. The habit once acquired 
will soften asperity in criticism, will impose reti- 
cence in giving advice unsought, will suggest the 
delicacy that respects others' reserve where in- 
quisitiveness would be indiscreet or annoying, will 
respect the desire for privacy — in fact, good 
breeding oils the wheels of life and is well defined 
as "Christianity in trifles." 

Another phase of the subject might with advan- 
tage be considered in relation to home life. We 
might imitate our treatment of strangers in con- 
trolling our irritability and avoid saying a thing 
just because we happen to feel it at the moment, 
or finding fault not so much to be effective as to 
give vent to our ill-humor. That irritability can 
be controlled, and that instantly, is proved by the 
celerity with which our frowns vanish and our voice 
takes on tones of genial cordiality at the unex- 
pected appearance of some acquaintance with whom 
we wish to stand well. 

Some considerable part of the troubles and per- 
plexities of home relations would disappear if we 
took care to keep our physical condition in order, 

202 



THE ABT OF LIVING WITH OTHERS 

An irritable temper is often but the result of over- 
taxed nerves. A man or woman has a limit of 
endurance as surely as a steam engine has. 

Let us take time to enjoy home and each other. 
"We pass this way but once." 

Vasari says of the painter Raphael that ill-humor 
could not live in his* atmosphere. Nothing is more 
contagious than temper — good and bad. There 
are people who seem to be non-conductors of this 
moral electricity, and they are blessings indeed in 
home life. They pass on only the pleasant things, 
harmonize all discords and seem to radiate cheer- 
fulness. They cultivate a certain impassiveness and 
imperviousness. When others are cross they turn 
a deaf ear or pretend not to see, and earn the grati- 
tude of the culprits afterward. Such natures are 
apt to have the amiable and forgivable weakness of 
liking to say pleasant things, and take occasion to 
bestow praise when possible, with the gratifying 
result of seeing such opportunities with increasing 
frequency — for we all love praise and turn our 
most attractive side toward those likely to appre- 
ciate it f 

203 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Surely, one of the chief pleasures of life comes 
from mutual admiration and esteem, and why should 
we not express a feeling that, like mercy, "blesseth 
him that gives and him that takes" ? 

Some families seem positively bashful about ex- 
pressing their affection to one another. Taking 
love on trust, because it has been expressed long 
ago, and never officially retracted, is like trying to 
warm one's self with the memory of last year's 
sunshine. Many hearts go hungry all their lives 
because of this habit of restraint, an inheritance, 
probably, from a Puritan ancestry. 

I believe in frequent repetition of the bliss-laden 
words, "I love you," which should come as readily 
to the lips as to the heart, supplemented by watch- 
ful little attentions and looks and tones that en- 
force the words. Words without deeds are an im- 
pertinence, of course, possible only to shallow 
natures, but our Anglo-Saxon blood rarely leads us 
into that tendency. 

If we are ever tempted to think that we do not 

get all the love to which our services and devotion 

would seem to entitle us, it is well to remind our- 

204 



THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS 

selves often that what we are wins more affection 
than what we do for people. Unselfishness, lov- 
ableness of disposition, tolerance, courtesy, cheer- 
fulness, sympathy — these are the graces none can 
resist. Love does not depend upon the will. Do 
we not all know persons to whom we owe affec- 
tion, but, little by little, our love dies out in spite of 
all our arguments with ourselves to prove that it 
should not? Those who are love-worthy will be 
loved. We reap what we sow, and it is a bad sign 
when others seem to enjoy themselves better in our 
absence. 

It is easy to picture the ideal home. It is a rest- 
ful, peaceful place, where our small virtues are 
magnified, our wrongs espoused, our faults con- 
doned, where we are believed in and most be- 
guilingly persuaded that we are that which we 
hope to become. The ideal home opens its doors 
in kindly hospitality, sharing generously what it has 
to give, be it much or little ; its ministries a source 
of good, like mountain springs, and sending forth 
from its shelter those who will found new homes 

like it for the blessing of generations yet to come. 

205 



HOW SHALL WE OBSERVE LENT? 




CHAPTER XIV 

HOW SHALL WE OBSERVE LENT? 

HAVE heard that there is a law of 
acoustics by which sounds, however 
conflicting and discordant on earth, 
seem to be harmonized to the hearer 
at a certain distance above. The experiment was 
tried in Paris. Each instrument of an orchestra 
played a different air during the ascent of a balloon 
in which were several scientific men who were test- 
ing the theory. 

At a certain height, what had sounded like pan- 
demonium became pleasing to the ear — the many 
sounds merging into one. 

May it not be that our several beliefs, our forms 
of worship, our partial knowledge of truth that is 
yet sincerely loved and lived, may, in the heights 
where Godhead dwells, make harmony? Not that 
we may each set up our individual views of truth — 

that were to set our watches above the sun — and 

209 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

few are capable judges — but even the most 
faithful, prayerful souls do not all think just 
alike. 

A family of children often have very different 
notions about how to please the mother, but the 
mother's heart excuses the blunders and welcomes 
all that means love. 

This is preliminary to a little chat about Lent — 
for we do not all think alike about its claims. A 
good motto in such cases is : 

"In essentials, unity; 
In non-essentials, liberty; 
In all things, charity." 

It is always wise to learn God's thoughts, as far 
as we may, on any given subject. Now, He gave 
through Moses the rules that were to govern His 
chosen people (chosen to be the custodians of His 
truth, to keep alive the knowledge of the true God 
in the world, for the sake of all His children) be- 
cause of qualities in them which He recognized. 

He commanded that they should give a tenth of 
all their possessions for the support of the priesthood 
and the expenses of the tabernacle and later of the 

210 



HOW SHALL WE OBSERVE LENTP 

Temple, but the "free-will offerings" were left to 
the prompting of their own hearts. 

Lent is not of divine institution and therefore 
does not come under the head of obligation, as I 
believe, but is a free-will offering, a gift of love — 
if we devote ourselves especially to all that shall 
please God. 

I do not believe in self-denial for self-denial's 
sake. That is asceticism. We need not punish our- 
selves; God will send the needed discipline, guided 
by perfect wisdom and perfect love. I do not think 
we can forestall Him by self-inflicted chastise- 
ments. 

A lady once upon her return home found her 
small son in bed, who welcomed her with, "Mamma, 
I was very naughty ; so I spanked myself as well as 
I could and put myself to bed 1" 

It was very funny, but I doubt if the self-spank- 
ing would have the same moral result as the real 
hurt administered in a judicial spirit by one who 
loved the child. 

There is a good deal of unprofitable self-denial 

and waste of force, and also a good deal of non- 
211 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

sense talked about Lent. A young girl once said 
in my hearing : "I am going to give up candy one 
week and cake the next, so as to have a little 
variety. ,, 

Now, that sort of thing stifles the inner voice. 
She felt that she should "do something religious," 
so she quieted her conscience in that way and no 
longer listened to it. 

Worse still, another girl cheated hers, saying: 
"I am going to give up sweets during Lent — I don't 
care for them, anyway." Why do anything at all — 
if one has so niggardly a spirit ? It reminds one of 
Svengali in "Trilby," who, after very gingerly wash- 
ing his face — in spots — looked at his hands "to 
see if they would do" ! 

Self-denial, I think, should have a definite object 
— a habit given up because it is bad for health or 
pocket, because we find ourselves growing self- 
indulgent and want to "keep the body under," or 
that we may give to others — the poor have to keep 
Lent all the year round. 

These duties are binding at all seasons, of course, 
but it is easier to begin reforms when others are 

212 



HOW SHALL WE OBSERVE LENTP 

doing the same. Zeal is contagious. How then 

shall we keep Lent? 

As for the actual abstaining from food at given 

times, that is a matter upon which I think God has 

left room for individual choice. If it helps you to 

do so, if the church or clergyman or friend whose 

guidance you trust enjoins it, by all means do it. I, 

for my part, hold with Herrick, a poet of the time of 

Charles I.: 

"Starve thy sin, not bin; 
That is to keep thy Lent." 

The bin may be full or empty — it is immaterial, 
but let us starve out the sin. Give it no quarter. 
Resolve that this Lent shall leave you better than it 
found you. 

The same may be said of giving up gaieties dur- 
ing Lent. Ask your conscience. It will give you 
an honest answer if you have not bribed and ham- 
pered it too often by your wishes. Little services 
and sacrifices freely, ungrudgingly, lovingly given 
are worth more than great ones that are perfunctory. 
You say, "Must I ?" Christ says, " You may!' 

Do not keep your mind upon yourself — not even 

213 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

on your sins. To focus your mind on your fault 
seems often to invite a fall. Do you remember, 
when learning to ride a wheel, you would appear 
to run into the very obstacles upon which you were 
concentrating all your attention to avoid ? 

Introspection is depressing, paralyzing to effort. 
Think much of God and let Him mould you. Rec- 
ognize that which in yourself needs amendment, 
purpose strongly to overcome it, and commend your 
cause earnestly to God. Each time that you are in 
danger of falling a thought will come in time to 
warn you — if you care. It whispers, "On guard !" 
Send up a quick little prayer for help and Omnipo- 
tence is on your side. 

During Lent let us leave the Martha spirit a little 
while and take Mary's opportunity of sitting at the 
Master's feet and learning lovingly of Him. A little 
while alone with God each day, spent in thinking of 
Him, of His love and goodness, will teach us to 
worship. Prayer is not worship — love, gratitude, 
adoration, praise are. 

I know that the shops are full of pretty new 

fashions, that the hints of spring in the air set young 

214 



HOW SHALL WE OBSERVE LENTP 

minds to work on the pleasure or the problem of 
seasonable raiment. Give a certain definite time to 
the subject, but try not to let thoughts of dress in- 
trude overmuch and at the wrong times. 

The church is one of God's schools, and during 
Lent we have unusual opportunities for learning 
what He has to teach. Sometimes, however, we 
feel self-congratulatory that we have been so regular 
in our attendance. Oh, let us get away from 
legality! Better stay away than earn such smug 
content. Let us go for what we can get of good to 
our souls — as we go to our meals with appetite — 
to do honor to God as an example to others and 
because our Saviour conformed to the pious prac- 
tices of His day. 

When we have no appetite we are ill. We may 
get "run down" in soul as in body. A friend once 
said to me : "I was very conscious of being spiritu- 
ally out of order. Lent was coming, but it was 
impossible for me to follow the church services ow- 
ing to illness in the family. I therefore set apart 
half an hour of each day when I was least likely to 
be intruded upon, and locked myself in my own 

215 



THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

room. I read first a portion of the Bible and then 
a selection from some great teacher. My thoughts 
were concentrated upon what I read, eager to take 
to my heart all the helpfulness possible. Realizing 
that I was alone with God, I prayed with the fullest 
sense that He was listening, and then holding my- 
self in His presence, as it were, I waited to learn 
if He had anything to say to me. Sometimes 
thoughts came stealing into my heart that were full 
of suggestiveness and inspiration for action — some- 
times there was only the happy sense of being loved 
and safe in God's care. This repeated each day 
brought about more healthful conditions of soul, as 
good food helps the body to recuperate. If I hur- 
ried the reading, giving but divided attention, or 
prayed perfunctorily, no happy results followed." 

Good food alone, though, is not sufficient for 
health. Exercise is essential, and so contempla- 
tion, prayer, devout feelings must be supplemented 
by activities for God. We become like stagnant 
water when the refreshment that has come to us is 
not passed on by us to others. No one is without 

opportunities. "Every hour comes with some little 

216 



HOW SHALL WE OBSERVE LENTP 

fagot of God's will on its back." Put the home 
claims first. God has placed each of us where He 
wants us to be, gives opportunities to each which, if 
we are faithful, will win us His approval as surely as 
though we did great things. It is great to be patient, 
gentle, kind, and helpful, a cheering influence in 
the lives of those dear to us. "Talk little, do much, 
without caring to be seen," is a motto full of secret 
helpfulness. 

In giving to God — whether of service or money 
— remember that what you give is worth only what 
the motive behind it is worth. 

A young woman once said to me : 

"It may not be according to pious tradition, but 
I do have such good times in Lent ! I stop all the 
'society racket' and take time to see my real friends, 
those whom I love, and have them with me. I try 
to bring the conversation around to subjects upon 
which I can get help from them, and pass on to them 
anything that I may have found valuable from books 
or experience. 

"I take occasion to hear other clergymen than 

my own, though I do not miss anything that he 

217 

) 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

has to give. Each day I plan something to do 
to make some one happy, if I can — though I won't 
let it worry me if I can't. 

"I 'entertain' only the lonely, the sad or un- 
fortunate, and those who have few pleasures — 
sometimes calling in a friend or two to help me 
make pleasant times for them. 

"We have such good times over the house- 
keeping. I take Bridget into my confidence and 
tell her that during Lent we must save everything 
we can on the bills, and of the amount saved, one- 
third I shall use to lift some one's burden of care 
or want, the next third shall be hers to help some 
poor body whom she may know, and the remaining 
third shall be given the master of the house, to use 
as he shall please — the use is sure to be a noble 
one. 

"Meantime I tell the cook that that same gentle- 
man must enjoy his meals, that we must not de- 
fraud him for our consciences' sake. And then 
such dishes as we devise are 'a caution,' she says. 
Our inventiveness is taxed to provide something 

delicious at small cost, with the result that we all 

218 



HOW SHALL WE OBSERVE LENT? 

enjoy the variety, and household leaks are revealed 
and stopped permanently. We make a frolic of it, and 
at Easter who so happy as Bridget and I when we 
lay out our savings and bring smiles to certain sad 
and sorry faces ! 

"I do try to put God first in my life and give real 
things prominence over the frills — the body rather 
than raiment. I do it even literally, walking in the 
parks to watch the lovely coming of spring, instead 
of among the shops where my thoughts cannot help 
running on my summer clothes and Easter bonnet, 
which important matter I settle with as little expend- 
iture of time and strength as possible." 

Christ has left on record His idea of a fast. 
"Anoint thine head and wash thy face that thou 
appear not unto men to fast." In modern language, 
look cheerful and happy; let your self-denial be a 
secret between God and you, not for the sake of 
credit from any one, nor for self-admiration. 

Do you get discouraged and despondent when you 

try to grow better? Christ would have you think 

more of what you may be than what you have been. 

"Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more." 

219 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

He is never tired of new beginnings. Every time 
we really try to please Him He is pleased. He sees 
us not as we are, but as He knows it is possible for 
us to be. A gardener training a vine or plant sees 
its future perfection to which he is striving to guide 
it. He already counts upon success. The lily came 
of a bulb that looked like an onion. Yet in that 
onion-looking thing lay all the possibilities of the 
exquisite flower. Wealth may be made suddenly; 
fame may come in a moment, but character can be 
attained only in one way — by repeated victories 
over temptation. 

Temptation is not sin. If we never exercise our 
moral power of resistance we shall get no muscle in 
our character. Without temptation we should be 
insipid automata. 

When tempted to discouragement, go and do 

something for God — it is a wonderful source of 

cheerfulness. A watchman on a boat was asked 

what he did when he felt sleepy. "I clean the 

lamp," he replied. The suggestion is good for 

Lenten meditation. 

When the last week of Lent comes and the world 

220 



HOW SHALL WE OBSERVE LENTP 

that rejoiced at Christmas in memory of the Child 
who brought God's message of reconciliation is re- 
calling the last sad days of His life of sacrifice, let 
us try to forget ourselves utterly and think of Him 
lovingly, gratefully, worshipfully — doing only 
what we think He would approve and bless. Our 
offerings may be little, but "love will stammer 
rather than be dumb." 



221 



PRAISE 




CHAPTER XV 

PRAISE 

jOW little we praise God! We pray 
because we want something, or fear 
something, but praise is the expres- 
sion of love, gratitude, adoration. 
Our own hearts crave it from one another. It 
proves God's love that He cares for it from us. 

Easter is the season of praise. Christ, our Cham- 
pion, has triumphed. The resurrection vindicates 
His claims. The earth begins to awake to renewed 
life and loveliness, and the yearly miracle turns our 
thoughts Godward. Tradition ascribes to the 
"Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace" a psalm chal- 
lenging praise from all created things : 

"O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; 
praise Him, and magnify Him forever !" 

From a book published in England over forty 

years ago, I received the suggestion of taking each 

225 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

subject of that marvellous psalm for meditation upon 
how God's works may lead us to praise Him. 

"O Ye Sun and Moon, Bless Ye the Lord!" 

Astronomers hold that just as air is full of invisi- 
ble water-vapor which condenses into mist, fog, and 
rain, so invisible world-vapor, floating in space 
through countless ages, condenses into great, rolling 
suns. From these, by their rotations, portions be- 
come detached, as drops of water fly from a whirl- 
ing grindstone, which, obedient to some law that 
rounds them and sets them spinning, start on their 
way as planets and moons. The central point, en- 
dowed by its mass with superior attraction, holds 
them circling around it. The sun, from which our 
earth was born, is in size a million times larger, 
burning with fierce fire, sending out great billows of 
flame, sometimes one hundred and fifty thousand 
miles in length, but by the time it reaches its family 
circle of planets its mission is beneficent light and 
heat. 

That great clock in the heavens marks day and 

night. Our relations to it give us the happy alter- 

226 



PRAISE 



nation of the seasons. It lends its light to the moon 
"to rule the night." The stars were not created for 
man's benefit, but the moon is our own. As it rolls 
around the earth once every month it turns itself 
once around in the same time, presenting always the 
same face towards us. The "man in the moon," 
therefore, enjoys days half a month long. 

The moon rules the tides, raising the water by its 
attraction. 

It remains for some genius to "harness" the tides, 
utilizing a tremendous power which acts for count- 
less miles with equal force. 

"O Ye Stars of Heaven, Bless Ye the Lord!" 

Looking skyward on a clear night, do you realize 
that those countless, twinkling points are suns with 
worlds circling around them — for aught we know, 
full of conscious life? 

Some five thousand may be seen. The telescope 
reveals seventy-five millions — more than one could 
count in five years, counting ten hours a day. 

The nearest neighbor of our solar system, Alpha 

Centauri, is twenty millions of millions of miles 

227 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

away. It is unthinkable! I read this some- 
where : 

"Suppose a railway between earth and this Alpha 
Centauri. I learn that the fare is one cent a hun- 
dred miles. 

" 'At that rate, what will a through ticket one way 
cost?' I inquire. 

" 'Only $2,000,000,000/ 

"I board the train and we set off. 'How fast are 
we going?' I ask. 

" 'Sixty miles an hour; through train; no stops/ 

" 'And when shall we arrive ?' 

" 'In just 38,051,750 years !' " 

Does it make God seem far away in His great- 
ness ? He is their Creator ; but He is our Father. 

I fancy that Edison would count as nothing his 

wonderful inventions in the balance against the life 

or happiness of a beloved child. We are creatures 

capable of loving God. It is the God whom Christ 

revealed whose laws are in force, whose power is 

in control through all the vast immensity — our 

God. 

It is said that all these suns and worlds are re- 

228 



PRAISE 



volving around some central point of the universe. 
May that not be Heaven — God's throne ? 

"O Ye Waters That be Above the Firmament, 
Bless Ye the Lord!" 

High in the firmament of air that roofs our world 
float the cloud-reservoirs, holding floods of water in 
their gaseous form. The waters are ever being 
lifted up by evaporation, and also purified, filtered; 
literally distilled. One tells us that "to raise back 
to vapor in the upper air a rain which covers the 
United States only one-tenth of an inch requires 
more power than all the steam-engines in New 
York, Philadelphia, and Chicago could produce, run- 
ning night and day, for a century." 

Were the thirsty air not fed with moisture it 
would suck it from everything and we should soon 
be mummies. We may study the process of cloud- 
making. The steam from a locomotive is invisible 
until, meeting colder air, it condenses into a white 
cloud and then vanishes. 

The explosions of the lightning-cloud clear the 

close, depressing air, and each raindrop carries the 

229 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

superabundant electricity harmlessly to the earth, 
aided by every leaf, twig, and pointed blade of 
grass. 

Do we ever see anything of such unearthly beauty 
as the clouds at sunset? The luminous white ones 
make one think of the "great white throne" of 
God. 

"Behold He cometh with clouds; and every eye 
shall see Him." "Who maketh the clouds His 
chariot." 

"O Ye Powers of the Lord, Bless Ye the Lord!" 

We think of God's powers in the convulsions of 
Nature that heaved the mountains, in volcanic ex- 
plosions, in thunder and lightning. But what of 
the powers that work noiselessly, unceasingly ? The 
sunshine's blessed ministries; gravity, that holds 
things steady — while its perfect adjustment to 
other laws makes us independent of it just so far 
as it works beneficently ; chemical action ; friction — 
without which a moving body could stop only 
by bumping against something — all are at work. 

This generation marvels at the mysterious force 

230 



PRAISE 



electricity, because of its novel manifestations, 
warming, lighting, cooking our meals, propelling our 
vehicles, carrying our messages, clearing and vitaliz- 
ing the air. The next will accept them through cus- 
tom as matters of course. 

God has agents for purifying the water and air so 
minute that a drop of water containing decaying 
animal or vegetable matter holds millions of them. 
They are also drawn into the atmosphere by watery 
vapor and, carried by the winds, they feed on the 
germs that menace health. "He careth for you." 

"O Ye Winds of God, Bless Ye the Lord! 39 

In order to do its appointed work the air is in 
continual circulation, and Nature's machinery sets 
it in motion to carry coolness to the tropics from 
the poles, and genial, sun-blessed air to the dwellers 
of the North, by which the Southerns escape an 
excess of heat. 

This is effected by the law that when parts of the 
earth's surface are heated by the sun the air near 
them becomes thinner and rises. Immediately a 
current of cooler air rushes in to take its place. 

231 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Another mercy : at night the land-air blows to the 
sea to be returned freshened and purified the next 
day. This, because the earth heats more quickly 
than the sea. The hot air rising, the sea-breezes 
rush in. At night the land, losing its heat faster 
than the sea, its heavier air then flows seaward. 

The earth's motion, mountains, and other obstruc- 
tions affect the winds, but some may be counted on. 
The trade winds blow uniformly in one direction. 
Columbus benefited by this. Instead of hugging the 
shore he stood out to sea. The trade-winds caught 
his ships, blowing them prosperously onward. Su- 
perstition accepted the omen of success, but later 
the sailors grew fearful of a changeless wind, un- 
known to their experience. 

The winds are God's sanitary agents, sweeping 
everything clean, and are the chief sowers of 
seeds. 

Maury says : "There is a river in the ocean — 
its banks and its bed are of cold water, while the 
current is warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fount- 
ain, while its mouth is in the Arctic seas. It is the 

Gulf Stream — more rapid than the Mississippi or 

232 



PRAISE 



the Amazon, its volume a thousand times greater." 
It distributes heat on its way. 

"0 Ye Fire and Heat, Bless Ye the Lord!" 

Professor Tyndall claims that from fire, in all its 
forms, the heat given forth in combustion only yields 
what the fuel has absorbed from the sun years or 
ages ago. 

In preparing the globe for man God saw to it 
that wood in abundance should supply the comfort- 
bringing fire to cook his food, warm his home, 
and facilitate the manufacture of countless things of 
use and beauty. As population increased He un- 
locked other treasures and showed him the coal 
stored in earth's cellars, anticipating his needs. 
Next, oil-wells flowed for his use. Then the gas 
imprisoned in the coal was discovered, and now 
comes electric light ! We are in the care of a Father. 

"O Ye Ice and Snow, Bless Ye the Lord!" 

God makes not only beneficent laws but also 
beneficent exceptions. Water has mercifully been 
exempted from the general rule that things are 

233 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

expanded by heat, contracted by cold. At first, the 
water on the surface cools, and, becoming denser, 
sinks to the bottom. If this continued the water 
would soon reach the freezing point and the whole 
mass become ice. But when all the water has 
reached a certain temperature the universal law is 
reversed and subsequent cooling makes it lighter, 
and the coldest layer floats at the top until it freezes. 
This sheet of ice interposed leaves a free body of 
water underneath, in which the fish swim at ease, 
and supplies a reservoir for human needs. Even a 
measure of light penetrates the ice. 

Cold puts the vegetable world to sleep, and the 
snow covers it as with a warm blanket. "He giveth 
snow like wool." The snow on the mountain-peaks 
feeds the streams, and the winds gather coolness 
from contact with it. Have you seen snow under a 
microscope? Each minute crystal is a marvel of 
beauty, and their variety of design is infinite. 

"O Ye Nights and Days, Bless Ye the Lord!" 

The law by which the earth turns one of its faces 
to the sunlight while the other turns away secures 

234 



PRAISE 



to each hemisphere twelve hours each of warm 
sunshine and cool darkness alternately — activity 
and rest. If, on its way around the sun, it did not 
whirl on its axis, too, one part, exposed to unre- 
lieved light, would be burned to a crisp; the other 
would become a region of death and darkness, cold 
beyond imagination. 

Day is the time of expenditure; night is for re- 
cuperation and repair. We use our powers of 
thought, feeling, and action through the hours of 
sunlight, and come, emptied and weary, to the gentle 
ministry of night, that folds itself about us and 
soothes us to sleep. The body gathers vigor and 
elasticity for the morrow. Whatever has vexed or 
troubled us is forgotten. For a few hours there is a 
truce to care — rich and poor fall asleep in peace 
and stillness, and God watches over all. 

"O all Ye Green Things upon the Earth, 
Bless Ye the Lord!" 

Fancy the clouds of choking dust that would 
envolop us without the grass to keep it down — 
earth's beautiful green carpet ! 

235 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

We are apt to lose appreciation of a blessing be- 
cause of its commonness. Trees supply us with 
houses and ships ; grains, fruit, and vegetables with 
food; medical herbs cure our ills, and the flowers 
gladden us. 

There is no latitude where trees and plants do not 
exist. In tropical lands, where the heat exhausts 
man's energy, God compassionately causes things 
to grow with little expenditure of labor. As a rule, 
though, He makes a simple plant, shuts up within it 
wondrous possibilities, and teaches man to improve 
and develop it. Wheat and rye were once wild 
grasses. Plants purify the air, absorbing its poisons 
and returning a supply of oxygen. 

Nothing in Nature leads an idle life: the reeds 
defend the land from the sea and sand which would 
render the fields infertile. 

God cares for each tiny seed. It is encased in a 

tough sheath, lined with a warm covering of starch, 

and enclosing abundant nutritive matter for the 

baby plant. The starchy covering, protecting it 

from cold, is unfit for food until the spring, when 

it changes into a substance for the plant to live upon. 

236 



PRAISE 



The sheath splits to permit the passage of root and 
stem, when it may draw food from the earth and 
shift for itself. 

Of the vitality of seeds, the favorite illustration is 
the Egyptian wheat, found with a mummy after 
three thousand years in a tomb, which, when planted, 
produced rich harvests. 

"O Ye Seas and Floods, Bless Ye the Lord! 3 ' 

"I never felt really out-of-doors until I went to 
sea," said John Burroughs. The sense of its vast- 
ness, its majesty, its resistless power, is not only 
impressive but bracing and buoyant. 

It is a dispenser of untold blessings. From con- 
tact with it the winds draw freshness. All the 
clouds, showers, dew, ice, and snow, all the rivers, 
wells, and springs, owe their existence to the ocean, 
whence, as watery vapor, they are lifted into the at- 
mosphere by evaporation to take the forms as 
needed. 

It was not without intention that there is five times 
as much water as land on our globe. The winds act 
as distributing agents. 

237 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

To warm the North and cool the South there is 
an interchange of waters by means of currents, 
caused by differences of density. Evaporation, in- 
duced by the warm air at the tropics, leaves the 
sea salt and heavy. At the Polar regions cold 
arrests evaporation, and melting snows add fresh 
water — the result is that the denser and lighter 
waters change places by circulation. 

Flood means "flowing water" — rivers, the great 
highways through the land. Sources of refresh- 
ment to man and beast, they also bring their contri- 
bution of fresh water to the sea. 

"O all Ye Fowls of the Air, Bless Ye the Lord!" 

Birds and their kind delight our eyes with beauty, 
our ears with gladsome music. They give us food 
and comfortable beds, they keep insect life within 
bounds, scatter and sow seeds, while some act as 
scavengers, ridding the air of dead animal matter 
by converting it into food. 

How marvellously they are equipped for flight! 

Their bodies are filled with tiny air-cells, which, 

being in connection with the lungs, they compress 

238 



PRAISE 



at will to swell the volume of their song, as a bel- 
lows feeds an organ. This air, being warmed by the 
body, is therefore lighter than the outside air, pro- 
moting buoyancy. The bones are hollow. Their 
feathers are the lightest, warmest covering possible, 
and made water-proof by an oil which they secrete. 
The instinct that guides them to genial climates at 
winter's approach, as though furnished with maps 
and guide-books, is still a mystery. The slowest 
birds fly thirty miles an hour, the swiftest a hundred 
and fifty ! 

Sailors used to carry pigeons on long voyages, 
freeing them in port to send home news of their 
safe arrival, so strong is the homing instinct of 
these birds. 

"O all Ye Beasts and Cattle, Bless Ye the Lord I" 

God's considerateness for our wants is seen again 
in the animal world. Living or dead, nearly every- 
thing about cattle is of use to us. Until the present 
moment we have needed an assistant to carry us 
and our burdens, and the horse is found in almost 
every land outside of deserts and the polar regions. 

2 39 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

For these God made the camel and the reindeer. 
The former, docile, strong, with feet cushioned that 
they may not sink into the sand ; eyes protected by 
thick lashes; and nostrils, mere slits, closed at will 
against the dust-storms ; the camel also carries with 
him, in a sense, a supply of food and water. The 
hump on his back is chiefly of fat, stored in time 
of abundance. After long journeys, if the coarse 
desert-herbage has been lacking, the hump almost 
disappears — to be restored by generous feeding 
when convenient. It has also an internal tank. 
Around the stomach are deep sacs which are filled 
with water as opportunity allows. These he can, by 
compression, cause to yield the water at need. 

The reindeer can live on the lichen growing on 
trees and ground. His acute smell guides him to 
it, and clearing away the snow he uses his brow 
antlers as pick and shovel. 

The dog has forsaken his kind to be our friend, 
tending flocks, drawing sledges, saving lives, guard- 
ing our property. 

"God is King of all the earth. Sing ye His 

praises with understanding!" 

240 



WHERE HAPPINESS IS FOUND 



CHAPTER XVI 



WHERE HAPPINESS IS FOUND 




|E all long for happiness, but even 
God cannot make us happy without 
first making us good, and goodness 
comes naturally and without effort 
only where love rules. I heard of a man who, try- 
ing to help another, said: "There is bread. There 
is whiskey. You prefer the whiskey. There is no 
helping you until you choose the bread/' 

George MacDonald once addressed a packed audi- 
ence of the poorest of London thus : "It isn't being 
poor that makes you unhappy. It isn't being rich 
or even being good that can make you happy. It's 
only knowing your Father that can make you that. 
You are little children hunting in the gutter for 
things. Behind you is a king's palace — finer than 
Buckingham. In it your Father is waiting for you. 
He is sending out His messengers all the time to bid 
you come to Him to receive all that His love longs 

2 43 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

to give you. But you won't listen. You won't even 
turn around. You just keep on hunting in the gut- 
ter for things, and it doesn't matter whether it's 
rotten vegetables or pennies or shillings you find 
there. They cannot make you happy without your 
Father." 

Mother Juliana, living in 1373, has left her testi- 
mony : "For all that is beneath Him sufficeth not us." 

But, reverting to the "great" commandment — 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart 
and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and 
with all thy strength" — you may reluct from it be- 
cause it asks so much. Nothing except Christ's life 
and death so proves God's love for us as this does. 
Love demands love, and nothing less than the whole 
heart's devotion satisfies it. It is "all or nothing." 
Anything less than all is as nothing — every lover 
knows that. Just because God loves us He wants 
our love. Obedience, service, dutiful devotion — 
these are not enough. 

This whole-hearted love is the ideal that God 

wishes us to attain, just as the Ten Commandments 

form the divine standard for human conduct at 

244 



WHERE HAPPINESS IS FOUND 

which we are to aim, by which we are to measure 
ourselves, as a ruler is used to correct crooked lines. 
Religion must be an appeal to the highest in us. 
As a telescope to our eyes it shows us reaches be- 
yond what we could have seen or imagined unaided 
— high enough to inspire our endless aspiration. 

Dean Hodges tells us that in the old torch-races 
of Greece no man's running counted for anything 
if the light of his torch went out. Before all else 
it was required that he keep that flame alive. "And," 
he adds, "love for God, it seems, is the sacred, nec- 
essary flame in the race of human life." 

But "love cannot be compelled," you say. Of 
course not. God knows that. He made us. He 
would not ask impossibilities, and He will not force 
our love. It must be a free-will gift or it is worth- 
less. "The test of love is preference," He could 
doubtless compel us to obey Him, but only beings 
with free, untrammelled wills, with the power of 
choice, can give love. And so God did not make 
us machines, but beings akin to Himself, and though 
love refuses to be coerced there are many ways in 
which it may be won. 

245 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

What wins love? Character, kindness, but most 
of all to give love is to get it. Does God love us? 
"God commendeth His love toward us, in that while 
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." "Herein 
is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us." 
Jesus taught us to call God "Father," even "Abba" 
— the tender home-name that the little children of 
Galilee used. "Behold what manner of love the 
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be 
called the sons (children) of God!" "The Father 
Himself loveth you." We have Christ's own word 
for that. If words mean anything, God loves us. 
If sacrifice means anything, God loves us. 

In one of the sacred poems of ancient Egypt — 
withheld from the people as too holy, but with which 
Moses was doubtless familiar, being initiated into 
all priestly mysteries — occur these lines : 

"Gentle of heart to those who cry to Him, 
Causer of pleasure and light, 

God is Father and Mother, the Father of fathers, the 
Mother of mothers. " 

The first thing to do is simply to believe what God 

says — to treat His word at least as you would that 

246 



WHERE HAPPINESS IS FOUND 

of any person who you believed habitually told the 
truth. You need not be afraid of assuming too 
much. You cannot strain your imagination to con- 
ceive of the depth of God's love for you. 

It is hard to believe that God loves us, for we 
know our unworthiness, but even a human mother 
loves her bad children, seeing in them possibilities 
of good invisible to others. When I am depressed 
about myself I read of the dear father in the parable 
of the prodigal. By love's might even one who had 
been the family disgrace was tenderly welcomed as 
soon as he turned to his father for forgiveness. 

To know God's character, read it in the life of 

Christ. He came to show us what God is like. "He 

that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." His life 

was a language that could not be misunderstood. 

Read thoughtfully, sympathetically, with your heart. 

Little children loved Him; a poor, hunted, sinful 

woman read forgiveness in His face. He "had 

compassion" on all who sinned or suffered. Peter 

wept bitter tears of repentance, but He only looked 

at him with gentle reproach. You can learn to love 

that character, and whoever loves Christ loves God. 

247 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

> 

I may be wrong, but I believe that we really love 
human beings only for some grace of goodness that 
is in them, some bit of Godlikeness — unselfishness, 
generosity, truthfulness, sincerity. Ask yourself 
why you love those whom you hold dearest. We 
love God with precisely the same faculty that we love 
any human friend. There is no mystery in it. The 
difference consists only in the person loved. 

The third thing we mentioned as winning our love 
was kindness, and our every joy, every blessing, 
every pleasure, as well as our every discipline, is sent 
by the all-perfect love of God. He knows us 
through and through, and with all the universe at 
His command, gives to each that which will bring 
us the greatest ultimate happiness. 

We sometimes think that it would be easy to love 

God if life were pleasant and sunshiny. We don't 

know our own hearts if we think that, for pleasure 

and prosperity only need to be prolonged for us to 

take them all as a matter of course; habit would 

soon dull appreciation, and the love dependent upon 

a continuance of favors would discover itself to be 

but a cheap, shallow thing. Would you value love 

248 



WHERE HAPPINESS IS FOUND 

that could be bought, that would die out if you did 
not keep on buying it? We love generosity, yes, 
but it is for the spirit that prompts the giver, not 
for the gifts themselves. Mere things cannot buy 
the costliest treasure of our hearts. 

We treat God much as some parents are treated. 
I once heard of a young man who seemed to regard 
his father as existing only to supply his wants. Pre- 
suming upon the love that would not let him want, 
he made no effort to please his father, but "tapped 
the old man for more" when his own money was 
gone. The father died suddenly, and the son, left 
alone with the dead, "came to himself/' and prayed 
in agony : "Oh, God, ask my father to forgive me !" 
Instinctively he trusted God to be his friend and win 
his pardon. 

Even that boy loved his father better than he 
thought. Perhaps we love God more than we real- 
ize. Persecution used to test sharply the fidelity of 
the Christians of long ago. It also developed hero- 
ism and deepened faith, and though we may not be 
of the stuff of which martyrs are made, we would 

doubtless suffer much before we would relinquish 

249 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

the faith and allegiance to God that we now have. 
A boy often looks upon his mother chiefly as the one 
to whom he may go in trouble — to have a button 
sewed on or a finger bandaged. Her permission 
given or withheld regulates his good times. Later, 
he may learn to know her as one who helps him to 
be pure and true and strong — and to love and 
honor her for her gracious, beautiful life. 

The best way to begin to love God is to do what 
you know would please Him, moment by moment. 
Obedience is the most practical test of sincerity. "If 
ye love Me keep My commandments. " The love 
will grow very fast if you serve Him in secret, doing 
things for His eyes alone, little things, even obliga- 
tory things, but into the doing of which you infuse 
a glad willingness, a painstaking interest for His 
sake. To love truth is to be truthful. To love 
Christ is to be growing like Him. 

Why do we make life so hard for ourselves? 

Many of us go on our way doing our daily duty, 

making sacrifices of inclination for principle, our 

faces sternly set with purpose to walk the narrow 

way, but, oh, it is all so cold! There is no glow 

250 



WHERE HAPPINESS IS POUND 

of love to make it easy, no joyous enthusiasm which 
comes of a close, personal relation with God that 
sets one's steps to music. 

It is like the difference between a marriage for 
love and one of convention. I know a young woman 
who had married a man whom she respected and 
admired and for whose love and devotion she was 
grateful. She had never been "in love," did not 
know what she was missing, and was trying to 
satisfy herself with the mere "things" of life. One 
day, while calling upon a neighbor, the click of a 
latch-key was heard at the door and her hostess 
said : "Will you excuse me just a moment ? I always 
want to give Frank his welcome home." 

Then followed sounds of suppressed rapture, little 
exclamations of pleasure, low murmurs in tender 
tones, and the little woman returned with height- 
ened color and the love still lingering in her 
eyes. 

"Has your husband been away?" inquired the 
visitor. 

"Oh, no, only downtown," was the answer. 

This happily-married pair were not young. 

251 



THE BOAD TO HAPPINESS 

Twenty years had only deepened and strengthened 
their love. 

The visitor went home with a heartache. Her life 
seemed defrauded of all that was worth having. 
She locked herself in her room and faced the situa- 
tion. She had pledged herself to her husband until 
death should part them. So then and there she 
determined that she would love him. She would not 
miss that which made other women's happiness. 
She deliberately set herself to think of her husband's 
fine qualities, his love-worthy traits. She looked 
below the generosity prompting his gifts for the 
motive of love. She began to live for him, to make 
him the centre of her world. She acted as though 
she loved him — barring endearments — and little 
by little, the man being worthy, the love came to her. 
Is there not suggestion here for us ? 

Don't waste any time examining your love or lack 

of love. Just begin to live for Him. Don't look 

for feelings — facts must come first. If I find that 

I am not so much trying to do God's will as to get 

God to do mine, I must change that before I shall 

love Him. 

252 



WHERE HAPPINESS IS FOUND 

The love of right for right's sake is one way of 
loving God, as is the hatred of wrong which in no 
way affects us or our interests. I heard of a boy 
to whom the atrocities of Nero's reign were graphic- 
ally related. The narrator, wondering at the boy's 
indifference, asked if it did not arouse his indigna- 
tion. 

"Well, he ain't done nothin' to me," was the an- 
swer. He was in his own world both centre and 
circumference. God cannot be our Father without 
making the rest of mankind our brothers and 
sisters. 

To love God "with all our heart" is to feel meas- 
ureless gratitude for all His loving-kindness — to 
know Him as a close, personal friend, sure of His 
unfailing interest and sympathy. Our happiness is 
more joyous because God's love planned it. Our 
sorrows are soothed by the trust that perfect love 
permitted them. We love those who love Him, and 
life is sweet in the gladness of belonging to Him. 

David really loved God. His language in the 
Psalms is glowing with the ardor of devotion. God's 
forgiveness of his grave sins won his whole heart. 

253 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Job loved Him, saying: "Though He slay me, yet 
will I trust in Him !" 

Mary Moody Emerson loved Him when she could 
say: "I felt that I could give Him more perhaps 
than an angel could — I promised Him in my youth 
that to be a blot on this fair world would be accepta- 
ble at His command. Yes, love Thee, and all that 
Thou dost, while Thou sheddest frost and darkness 
on every path of mine !" 

To love God with all our "souls" is worship, 
adoration, the highest reach of communion with 
God. If we so love Him we are profoundly con- 
scious that God loves and pardons, conscious, too, of 
our need of both. We hate sin, especially in our- 
selves. Our ideals are lofty. 

To love God with our "minds" is to make intelli- 
gent use of the powers that He has given us, to be 
able to give "a reason of the hope that is in" us, 
to consecrate our gifts and talents, to appreciate His 
marvellous works in Nature and the beauty abound- 
ing everywhere, adoring the love and wisdom so 
revealed. They who so love are the reverent seekers 
after truth throughout the universe. They try to 

2S4 



WHERE HAPPINESS IS FOUND 

solve the problems of suffering humanity. They see 
God's hand in the making of history, His loving pur- 
pose in all His dealings with mankind. 

To love God with our "strength" is the test of all 
the rest. It means sincerity, reality. It means striv- 
ing against all that is mean and unrighteous in our 
little world. If we so love Him we are loyal to our 
heart's core. Our work will be conscientious — 
nothing slighted. We will care more to do right 
than to have people think we do so. 

Temperament comes in to determine in which way 
we will love God most, but we should try to love 
Him in all the ways. 

They who love Him most with the "heart" must 
guard against caring too much for mere feelings. 
To test their love by their obedience will counteract 
sentimentality, which may even become shallow 
emotionalism. 

To them who love most with the "soul," practical 
work for God will control the tendency to a religion 
that may grow self-indulgent even in worship. 

They who love best with the "mind" need to imi- 
tate Christ's spirit of tolerance and tenderness in 

255 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

their daily relations to their fellows, and hold in 
check all pride of intellect. 

They who love most with their "strength" must 
watch against activities usurping the place of devo- 
tion — and be "more careful not to serve God much, 
but to please Him perfectly." "All things work 
together for good, to them that love God." 



256 



SUNSHINY CHRISTIANS 



CHAPTER XVII 



SUNSHINY CHRISTIANS 




IT stands written as characteristic of 
one woman that she "made a sun- 
shine in the shady place/' than which 
I know of no more endearing quality. 
Should it not be one which especially distinguishes 
those of whom the Master said, "Ye are the light of 
the world"? To be sunshiny Christians, lovable 
Christians, is our calling. Real goodness is lovable. 
We must make our virtues winsome for God's honor, 
as well as for our own happiness. 

The first requisite for those of us who would be 
"blithe and good and gay," is to have a heart and 
conscience at peace. This does not mean an ap- 
proving conscience, but one in trustful, loving rela- 
tion with God. 

Now, no one can be at peace and have "a heart 
at leisure from itself" who lacks the conscious, 
restful belief that his or her sins are forgiven, 

*59 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

who only hopes that they are forgiven, or, as so 
many say, "hopes that perhaps they are forgiven." 
St. John's whole first epistle was written that 
Christians should know themselves forgiven and 
accepted. "These things have I written unto you 
that believe on the name of the Son of God ; that ye 
may know that ye have eternal life." 

Unless we are sure, we need to lay the foundations 
of our faith over again. God assures us of salvation 
as a present possession. "God hath given to us 
eternal life, and this life is in His Son." He would 
not leave us in uncertainty about so important a 
matter. But we know ourselves to be so unlike 
what God's children should be that we fear to de- 
ceive ourselves by assumptions that God may not 
justify. Self never gives us any ground for confi- 
dence. If we go by our feelings about what God 
has promised, instead of thankfully believing and 
joyously accepting what He has said, our lives will 
be both unhappy and unproductive. 

There are three facts on God's side which are not 

affected by anything that we have done or can do. 

First, God's love — "God so loved the world" 

260 



SUNSHINY CHRISTIANS 



(we cannot imagine why) that He gave His only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life/' The 
next fact is Christ's sacrifice for the world's re- 
demption. He did not give His life for nothing. 
He said : "No man taketh it from Me. ... I have 
power to lay it down and I have power to take it 
again." He thought we were worth saving, and 
love never counts the cost of self. Why such a 
sacrifice was necessary we do not know yet. A 
problem in quadratic equations could not be made 
intelligible to a little child. The third fact is Christ's 
invitation. It could not be more universal. It is 
"Whosoever will." The invitation is repeated and 
made personal to us individually by the Holy Spirit 
speaking to our consciences. 

Now, if we have believed and accepted these facts, 
why are we not living in the sunshine? Because 
we permit certain shadows to cloud its bright- 
ness. 

One of these is sometimes disappointment in our- 
selves, and we begin to doubt whether we have been 

saved, after all — if we are so worthless. Never 

261 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

allow yourself for one moment to doubt the reality 
of your salvation if you have once accepted God's 
pardon in sincerity. When we have given ourselves 
to God He takes us. We do not belong to ourselves 
any more. Anything laid on God's altar was His 
own thenceforward. Remember that He wants us. 
This fact may be 

"darkness to my intellect, but sunshine to my heart." 

We can take ourselves away again only by an apos- 
tasy that ceases to believe in Him and cares nothing 
for His wishes or His laws. 

There is a difference between "state" and "stand- 
ing." Your "standing" is that of a child of God, 
desired and beloved. Your "state" or condition may 
be far from what it should be, but if you purpose to 
do right, and keep on purposing and trying, God 
will infallibly lead you on to success. 

For illustration, take a wild rose tree and put into 

it a graft from an American Beauty. Gradually the 

finer variety dominates the original plant, and the 

flowers come forth as American Beauties. The 

gardener speaks of it and regards the plant as be- 

262 



SUNSHINY CHBISTIANS 



longing to the finer sort before a bud is seen. But 
there are often shoots that come up from the roots, 
or below the graft, and these will bear wild roses. 
We must cut these down as they appear, letting all 
the strength go to nourish the new life. 

"Beloved" — nobody does the best that he can, 
for the ideal in every one is higher than his attain- 
ment, to lure him on to better and higher. What 
we should expect of ourselves is the unceasing desire 
for God's approval and the conscious effort to win it 
every day. 

Sometimes the "shadow" takes the form of dis- 
couragement — not only that we are morally no bet- 
ter, but, comparing our lives with others, we seem to 
have accomplished so little, and feel the depressing 
sense of failure. A dear old clergyman whom I 
knew used to say very emphatically, "Discourage- 
ment is of the devil. Never listen to him !" Life's 
best accomplishment cannot always be measured by 
what we can see, or by any of the world's prizes, 
but by what we have become in ourselves — un- 
consciously. 

Imagine a little girl required to practise at the 

263 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

piano half an hour every day. At the end 
of the term the result is not very marvellous, 
but think of her gain in character if she has 
been faithful day by day, doing her little 
best — punctual to begin, painstaking, conscien- 
tious in not leaving off until the half-hour is 
concluded. Her hands must be neat, her carriage 
erect, her mind is growing in appreciation of har- 
mony. This is all educative. Compare these with 
her faulty little performance on the instrument, by 
which she judges her own progress, and say whether 
it has been a failure ! 

A little boy of the slums came under the influence 
of the good people connected with a church parish- 
house. At Christmas it was planned that all the 
children should bring a gift to the tree to be sent 
to others poorer than they. The boy had nothing to 
give but a very fine, red apple. He displayed it 
with great pride, but could not resist pressing his 
teeth against it from time to time. When it came 
his turn to make his gift the apple was dented all 
over its surface — but never once had the teeth 

pierced the skin. Think of the self-control — it was 

264 



SUNSHINY CHRISTIANS 



heroic! The boy did not know it. He may have 
been comparing his gift with the others. 

Being at rest about the great future, and secure 
in God's love toward us in the present, a third 
thing that helps to make sunshiny Christians is hav- 
ing something to do for God, some worth-while 
work, done only for His approval. It may become 
a great work — the greatest have had such insig- 
nificant beginnings — or its value may consist 
chiefly in the true-hearted, wholly-honest desire to 
please Him in the more faithful doing of the com- 
monplace duties of every day. 

My little girl once found in the waste-paper basket 
a bit of flannel, which she diligently punctured with 
a pin tied to a thread for nearly an hour in the effort 
to make me a birthday gift. The boggled bit was 
long treasured because of the love and patience that 
had gone to its making, though its beauty and use- 
fulness were not apparent. 

Every one who has a heart can make the world 

a little better or happier because he or she is in it, 

but the work that yields the most happiness in the 

doing and insures the most blessed joy-bringing re- 

265 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

wards is that of helping others on the way back to 
the Father whose love is waiting for them. The 
joy of bringing a soul to Christ is like that of first 
love or first motherhood, so deep is it and so utterly 
satisfying. 

Let me tell you of the work of the sunniest- 
hearted girl I ever knew. She once volunteered in 
an emergency to take the class of an elder sister 
at Sunday school, and, all eagerness to make her 
one opportunity of value to each, she talked with the 
fire and fervor, the spontaneity and enthusiasm of 
one believing intensely that she was bringing to 
them the glad tidings of great joy. As a girl with 
girls — she was little older than they — she knew 
just how to appeal to them. Upon her sister's mar- 
riage, soon afterward, the class eagerly clamored for 
her to teach them. 

"You must help me. I know scarcely anything," 
she declared to them ; but, "sure of God," she under- 
took the charge. Her interest, her earnestness, 
above all, her bright enthusiasm, were contagious, 
and the time together on Sunday seemed so short 

that they gladly accepted her invitation to meet at 

266 



SUNSHINY CHRISTIANS 



her house for an hour each week. To make it more 
social some trifling refreshment was served. With 
all her heart this girl of nineteen taught them, lov- 
ingly, persuasively, aiming at nothing less than the 
real conversion and consecration of every soul there. 
Each one had some friend whom she asked per- 
mission to bring, until the class numbered thirty or 
more. Her joyous philosophy of life attracted her 
own personal friends. She seemed so happy, they 
knew her to be good, and one and another would 
say : "You have something that we have not. Show 
us how to be good and happy like you." 

That was twenty years ago. Her "congregation" 
— as we used playfully to call her girls — has re- 
mained faithful to the highest ideals, and gives to 
her still the most ardent affection. I have gone into 
detail because an example is more appealing if we 
know of the small beginnings that led to successful 
results. 

"Fourthly," as the sermons say, we must use all 
our will-power to look on the bright side of every- 
thing. We must resolutely turn away — in their 

beginning — from thoughts that darken our sun- 

267 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

shine and prevent our being a source of cheer to 
others. A feeble will-power places us at the mercy 
of our most ignoble selves and their powers of tor- 
ture. 

Are we discontented ? Trust God that, whatever 
our circumstances, they are those exactly adapted to 
our best development. If we cannot emerge from 
them brave, true-hearted, love-worthy, we should be 
less successful were we placed otherwise. We are 
being prepared for eternal happiness. Let us re- 
gard worry and apprehension as sins against our 
loving God, and live — just for to-day — trustfully 
obedient to the injunction, "Be careful (full of care) 
for nothing." 

The source of worry and "borrowing trouble" is 
often a physical one. We overtax ourselves, and 
tired nerves make us see everything through "blue 
spectacles." It is not so much what we do as how 
we do it that exhausts us. 

Most important is it that we keep our spirits 

serene, cheerful, and hopeful, our faces smiling, the 

tones of our voices gentle (as some one remarked, 

"It is possible to say 'no' without using a mega- 

268 



SUNSHINY CHRISTIANS 



phone") ; in short, to create an atmosphere in which 
those about it shall be soothed and "happified." 
This, for the sake of those we love, and for our 
Master's honor. 

If we should see a woman carrying a burden too 
heavy for her, while a man at her side made no 
effort to relieve her, we should think it a great re- 
flection on the man. When we, who are Christians, 
are burdened and worried and apparently get no 
help from the God whom we profess to trust, is it 
strange that outsiders are not attracted to Him ? 

St. Paul gives us a fine tonic for our spirits — 
and it means success — "This one thing I do, for- 
getting those things that are behind and reaching 
forth unto those which are before, I press toward 
the mark." Granted that the past has been wrong 
and bad and sad, the future is yours to make it, by 
God's help, what you please. Don't say weakly, 
despondently, "I ought to be better," but "I will be 
better." 

A soldier turned clergyman, whose religion was 
unconventional in expression though sincere in 
essence, used to pray : 

269 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

"Here we are, dear Lord, before Thee, men and 
women with all their burdens. Oh, be good to us ! 
Help us to turn our backs on the past, hold up our 
heads, square our shoulders, and do the right. The 
breath is still in us, and all things are possible !" 

If we have not turned to God for His love and 
pardon let us do it at once. There is not a moment 
to lose. "For all have sinned . . . being justified 
freely by His grace through the redemption that is 
in Christ Jesus/' "In whom we have redemption 
through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, accord- 
ing to the riches of His grace." 

Grace is the boundless, wondrous love of God, 
and we are to grow in it as flowers in the sunshine. 

There are two ways of overcoming the evil in us. 
One is by fighting it, the other by looking away from 
it and with all our hearts cultivating the opposite 
virtues. 

"Thou shalt not" is for the childhood of the race 

and the individual. Children must be taught that 

punishment will follow if they strike each other or 

take what is another's, but the maturer soul may be 

trusted with "Thou shalt." It is not to them, "Thou 

270 



SUNSHINY CHRISTIANS 



shalt not kill, nor steal," but "I say unto you, love 
your enemies, do good to them that hate you." 

Keep self in the background. Live above its 
praise or censure. To be self-contemplative, self- 
centred, diagnosing our own condition, is like pulling 
up plants to see if they are growing. Character 
should grow naturally from the impulse within it, 
and the faults and sins drop away. Have you not 
seen the dead leaves hanging on the trees in late 
winter, sorry relics of the summer past? They 
linger until the new life begins to stir through their 
branches and then they soon fall. Our part is to 
"keep ourselves in the love of God," and remove all 
obstructions that hinder our growth. "Look up and 
not down : Look out and not in : Look forward, not 
back : And lend a hand" is a counsel full of inspi- 
ration. 

Aim high — "the arrow hath its chances." We 

have only to obey our Captain. We do not know 

the plan of the campaign. We do not need to know, 

but He will lead us to victory. He never asks the 

impossible, but does expect at times "prodigies of 

valor." What great leader does not, and what 

271 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

soldiers are not honored by the confidence shown in 
giving them the opportunity? 

If such teachings as that of "turning the other 
cheek ,, seem too high, don't talk about it, but do it 
or try to do it, and the difficulty vanishes. 

"God's in His heaven — 
All's right with the world!" 

"These things write we unto you, that your joy 
may be full." 



272 



THE DEVIL— A STUDY 




CHAPTER XVIII 

THE DEVIL — A STUDY 

JN war, as in law, it is accounted wis- 
dom to know one's adversary. We 
have an hereditary foe, an arch- 
enemy, the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, 
Abaddon, Apollyon, Beelzebub — he has many 
"aliases" — and putting together what the Bible 
tells us of this malignant personality, and the de- 
ductions therefrom of men, thoughtful, learned, and 
of broad orthodoxy, we may glean enough, perhaps, 
to make the study profitable. 

History does not begin with the human race. 
Way back in the far reaches of eternity, a great 
tragedy took place. The account is given us only in 
briefest outline and suggestion in the Sacred Story 
— perhaps it could not be made intelligible to us, 
ignorant of the condition or motives of beings un- 
like ourselves — could not be conveyed in human 
speech to human thought. 

*75 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

We read that there were in Heaven, from the 
beginning, three arch-angels or chief angels — 
Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. 

Placed at the very summit of the scale of created 
beings, Lucifer aimed at something higher. 

"To set himself in glory above his peers. He 
trusted to have equalled the Most High." This 
substitution of self for God, of self will for God's 
will, was the essence of treason, leading to rebellion. 
Next, seducing other free beings, we read that "there 
was war in Heaven" — doubtless a figurative ex- 
pression, adapted to our understanding, the real 
fact transcending our powers of comprehen- 
sion. 

One characteristic of all free existence is the 
power of choice — to obey or to resist, to give or 
withhold love, worship, allegiance. The angels 
had, not less perhaps, but more than man, the gift 
of free will (since they were unhampered by any 
sins of heredity, owing their existence to an act of 
God's creative will, and not to ordinary filiation) 
and they too had their time of testing. 

The Bible tells us the result — that "some kept 

276 



THE DEVIL-A STUDY 



not their first estate/' that they "abode not in the 
truth, and incurred God's wrath." 

God might have annihilated the leader and his 
rebel hosts. That He did not do so is significant. 

The punishment was also a moral one. In being 
left to the choice that they had made — their wills 
opposing themselves to God's will, they were con- 
demned to an irrevocable antagonism. 

There is an ancient theory, held by some of the 
earliest Christian writers and "Fathers," supported 
by Rabbinical traditions, and accepted by several 
eminent modern scholars, that our earth originally 
formed part of the domain assigned to Lucifer, that 
he held it, as it were, in fief, ruled it as viceroy — 
perhaps over lesser angels, until the day in which 
he aspired to make himself lord, instead of 
vassal. 

Our Lord himself calls him the "prince of this 

world"; and in the scene of the temptation in the 

wilderness, Satan puts forth the astounding claim 

to the ownership of the kingdoms of this world, in 

the words — "All this power will / give thee, and 

the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and 

277 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

to whomsoever I will, I give it." The boast is not 
rebuked or denied. 



At the very beginning of our revelation we are 
told that at one time, the earth was "without form, 
and void." The more correct translation reads — 
"And the earth was in ruins/' implying a former 
existence. Modern Science claims that immeasura- 
ble ages are required to account for the formation 
of the earth and the elements that compose it, and 
the ancient hypothesis explains it on the ground 
that this world, at the defection of Satan and his 
rebel hosts, became a total wreck, and was blotted 
out in darkness and disgrace. 

God afterwards decided to re-create it, to call 

a new world from the ruins of the old, with a new 

master, — man. What then has become of Lucifer ? 

St. Peter tells us that the rebel spirits were cast 

down to hell, and in chains are awaiting their final 

judgment. The chains may mean, symbolically, the 

limitation of their power and liberty ; and the word 

278 



THE DEVIL-A STUDY 



translated "heir' is unlike that used anywhere else 
in the Bible, not a Hebrew, but a Greek word, 
meaning as some say, the regions of the air, the 
confines or verge of our material system. St. Paul 
calls Satan "the prince of the powers of the air," 
and affirms that "we wrestle not against flesh and 
blood but against principalities and powers, against 
the rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in 
heavenly places." 

Man is then given lordship over the renewed and 
rejuvenated earth, with nothing denied him, "except 
a communion with and prying into the nature and 
origin of the kingdom of evil," veiled in the narra- 
tive under the symbol of a tree. Either the story of 
the temptation is told us as an allegory or parable, 
or if literal, it was adapted to the childhood of the 
race. "For one restraint, lords of the world, beside" 
Satan, dispossessed, now draws near (in the under- 
handed, subtle manner, that no created thing but a 
snake could so well typify and express) and en- 
deavors to seduce man, his rival and successor, into 
joining his rebellion against the Almighty. 

He begins with the woman, plying her with the 

279 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

same temptation by which he himself had fallen — 
"To be as gods" — a law unto themselves, saying 
to God's "Thou shalt not" — "I wiir — which is 
rebellion, misusing the freedom of choice, that alone 
raised them above the position of mere automata, 
and taking the risk of God's displeasure upon 
Satan's word that the severity He threatened would 
not be visited upon them. These were the sins by 
which man fell. Satan uses the same tactics still, 
to lure into evil. 

Having succeeded in his designs, the Devil leaves 
man to his fate. 

The world, over which man was given dominion, 
has again been forfeited, and Satan, the former 
feudal possessor, seems to resume his sway. But, 
the "seed of the woman" is promised ; who, in man's 
name, "shall bruise the serpent's head" — a new 
champion — and "the kingdoms of the w;orld shall 
become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His 
Christ." 

Meantime, the struggle goes on, our earth the 

battlefield, we, the combatants, arraying ourselves 

on either one side or the other, consciously or un- 

280 



THE DEVIL-A STUDY 



consciously the allies of God or of the Devil. It is 
a matter that the "angels desire to look into." St. 
Paul says : "We are a spectacle unto the world, to 
angels, and to men." 

A tremendous issue is at stake. If the race decide 
for Jehovah, then will He lead us on to victory. 
The word "sacrament" applied by the early church 
to the Lord's Supper, means a military oath — our 
oath of allegiance, as I have said elsewhere. 

We are encouraged to fidelity — "since we are 
compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses" 
— doubtless the other intelligences of God's uni- 
verse, and "there is joy in Heaven over one sinner 
that repenteth." Our moral victories are triumphs 
for God's side ; our sins advance the cause of Satan. 



II 



Again Lucifer comes upon the scene of this 
world's story. 

In the opening chapter of Job, we have a court 

scene, in which the sons of God come to present 

themselves before Him, who receives as a king the 

281 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

reports of those to whom He has delegated author- 
ity. Satan, still one of the hierarchy of Heaven, 
comes also, to tell of his domain, the earth. 

With the mention of earth comes the thought 
of His pleasure in the virtues and fidelity of his 
servant Job, and God calls upon Satan — ever 
sceptical of human righteousness — to do him 
justice. 

Satan answers with a covert sneer that Job serves 
God because it pays, that selfishness is at the root 
of his devotion. The aspersion upon Job's purity of 
motive thinly veils an attack upon the heart of God 
Himself. Satan virtually says that God cannot be 
loved disinterestedly, that affection for Himself, 
apart from His "gifts," is not possible to human 
nature. 

God accepts Satan's challenge to put Job's loyalty 
to the proof — not to vindicate his honor to the 
Father of lies himself, but for the sake of those 
whom Satan should impress with the same sus- 
picions. 

Job's is to be a test case. We get a glimpse behind 

the scenes — but Job knew nothing of what had 

282 



THE DEVIL-A STUDY 

taken place in the invisible world. Affliction after 
affliction came upon him, but in his faith he ex- 
claims — "Shall not the Judge of all the world do 
right ?" and in his humility — "The Lord gave, and 
the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name 
of the Lord." 

When, at length, leprosy was superadded, and his 
friends, seeking to justify God's dealings, argued 
that secret sin must be the cause of such punish- 
ment and urged him to confession and repentance, 
conscious of innocence, Job can only appeal from 
the God who seems to be mocking his helplessness 
with gratuitous and capricious exhibitions of His 
power, to the God of justice and of goodness that 
his heart longs for and his own consciousness tells 
him must exist. Finally he rests upon the trium- 
phant conviction that he may entrust his cause to 
Him. 



"My witness is in heaven 
And my record is on high. 



Satan prophesied that he would "curse God to 
His face." In his agony, complaints escape him 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

against the traditional God, but he never renounces 
his allegiance, and when Jehovah appears, his re- 
pentance expresses itself in self-abhorrence and 
renewed devotion. 

Satan is baffled, and God heaps upon the cham- 
pion who has suffered for His honor, and vindicated 
the disinterestedness of his love (which was given, 
not sold), tokens of favor and affection that raise 
him to a position of earthly splendor immeasurably 
greater than he had known before. Satan had been 
but the instrument to prove the triumph of right- 
eousness ! 

God has no more sublime witnesses to His lov- 
ableness than those who, bowing beneath His 
chastisements, can yet say, through their tears — 
"The cup that my Father giveth me, shall I not drink 
it?" "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in 
Him!" 



Ill 



Centuries pass, and the Devil scores many vic- 
tories. At last, the time comes when God opposes 

284 



THE DEVIL-A STUDY 



the long-promised Champion to the "Prince of this 
world." God's other self — His well-beloved Son — 
reduces Himself to the dependence of a created 
being. 

The arch-angel tried to make himself God. The 
Son of God makes Himself man. 

In obscurity and poverty, He yields to God the 
perfect obedience refused both by Satan and by 
man. 

Satan now plans to measure himself in single 
combat with the Son of God. We have the account 
strained through the understanding of the disciples, 
and perhaps the inward experiences of our Lord 
could only be conveyed to human understanding in 
the form of a parable. 

The Christ had sought retirement to commune 
with His Father, previous to entering upon His 
public ministry. Unconscious of the needs of the 
body during the protracted exaltation of an intense 
and absorbing communion with God, He comes back 
to the realization of His physical necessities, only to 
find that the arch-fiend has chosen that moment of 
weakness in which to assail Him. 

28s 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Satan urges Him to use His divine power to work 
a miracle for His own benefit — for a death by star- 
vation seemed to threaten. A man so placed could 
only have asked God's help, and trusted Him either 
to send him food, enable him to do without, or 
take him to Himself, beyond the reach of suffering, 
and only as man, and limiting Himself to the use 
of such weapons as mankind has, does Christ repel 
the Tempter with the truth that it is not by food 
alone but by God's care that man is kept alive. He 
falls back upon God's promises to care for His own. 
"Trust in the Lord, and do good, and verily thou 
shalt be fed," is but one among many. Man lives, 
not by bread but by God. The real support is not 
in the gift but in the giver behind the gift. 

The temptation to use unlawful means for self- 
advantage, has ever been one of the Devil's most 
successful baits. 

Subtle, clever, and wily, Satan accepts Christ's 
argument, but by pushing it too far, tries to lure Him 
into another danger — that of over-confidence. 

The Devil urges Him to test God's care, in which 

He is so trustful, by casting Himself down from a 

286 



THE DEVIL-A STUDY 



great height, before the assembled crowds in the 
temple-court, since the angels had Him in charge 
to guard His every step. 

What a stupendous, what a convincing miracle, it 
would be for awe-struck multitudes to see Him 
descend, as it were from Heaven, upborne by the 
sustaining power of His Father! Who could 
then doubt His Messiahship, His supernatural 
origin ? 

But it was not the way in which the world was 
to be convinced of sin and its need of a Saviour. 
He must live His life and do His work in a holy 
human way, appealing to the hearts and con- 
sciences of men by a life spent in self-sacrifice for 
them. Satan lures us, too, into the danger of pre- 
suming upon God's keeping power, when we wilfully 
go where we know that temptation may assail us. 
It were impious and impertinent to endeavor to con- 
trol circumstances so as to compel God to act, or 
to forfeit His word. 

Christ refuses to "tempt" or test God, by pre- 
suming upon His protection when going counter 

to His will. 

287 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Satan now centres all his hopes upon his last 
stake, and verily, the temptation seems not unworthy 
the consideration of the God-man. 

In offering the "dominion of the world and the 
glory of it," he promises no earthly sovereignty — 
that were no temptation to the Lord of the Universe. 
Satan's power is a spiritual thing. He sways men's 
minds and wills, and his claim that the world is 
"delivered unto him and to whomsoever he wills, 
he gives it," we know, is to no visible temporal 
domain, but to a power that makes mankind his 
slave for the sake of the earthly rewards that seem 
to be his to bestow. 

What he offers to the Christ, is the resignation 
of this power — the abdication of his authority. As 
"prince of this world" he is ready to lay down his 
arms — if he can enjoy the triumph of seeing the 
Son of God at his feet ! 

The ambition that was his original sin and had 

cost him God's favor would be satisfied by one 

act of worship on the part of his divine Master. No 

need of the expiation of Calvary — no more sin, 

no more sorrow or suffering for the throbbing world 

288 



THE DEVIL-A STUDY 



of men and women upon which He looked down ; and 
all through the ages, mankind should be free and 
holy and happy. He felt the temptation, else were 
it no temptation, for as the Son of Mary, with a 
human ancestry, heredity played its part. But, 
though a cross was the alternative, He repelled the 
suggestion and met Satan squarely with the com- 
mandment — the breaking of which had hurled the 
arch-angel from high heaven — "Thou shalt wor- 
ship the Lord, thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
serve. ,, Beaten and baffled, the Devil retired "for 
a season." 

When, with tortured frame and whirling brain, 
rejected by the world and abandoned by His Father, 
Christ hung upon the Cross, Satan seemed near his 
triumph, but the resurrection attested the victory of 
man's Champion, and, in His risen body, He reap- 
pears to His faithful ones, and makes the claim "All 
power is given Me in Heaven and on earth/' 

To a redeemed and ransomed world, is given a 
proclamation of pardon — to all who will accept it. 

Instead of annihilating Satan, God uses him to 

test, train, and develop humanity. 

289 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Our minds are inhospitable to new views of truth, 
but have we not asked ourselves why God should 
seem to have created a force antagonistic to Him- 
self? 

Given the magnificent power of free-will, to the 
angels in common with man came the possibility 
to sin. 

God could not be content with a universe of pup- 
pets — beings automatically good. 

Lucifer and his followers fell, but though repre- 
sented as the malignant enemy, active in seeking 
man's destruction, he is still God's servant, doing 
God's will as truly as did Pharaoh, when, by op- 
pressing the chosen people, he drove them to cry 
unto the Lord for deliverance. 

Never should we know our need of God, but for 
our consciousness of sin. Never can we love Him 
as our Father until He has drawn us to Himself by 
gratitude for sin forgiven. 

God permits Satan's work in order to breed in us 

free, God-loving wills, making room by preferential 

choice for the exercise of character and the testing 

of fidelity. 

290 



THE DEVIL-A STUDY 



The measure of our resistance to evil is the 
measure of our loyalty. 

Of what value is a man's allegiance if he has no 
power to be other than true, hedged about by 
omnipotence in a predetermined course? What is 
love worth that is not free? There is no heroism 
in untempted truth, honor, integrity. 

Our physical muscles grow strong only by over- 
coming resistance. We rise to spiritual heights by 
temptations surmounted, and evil is made an engine 
for good, to produce holiness by driving us to God. 



291 



OUR WONDERFUL SELVES 




CHAPTER XIX 

OUR WONDERFUL SELVES 

Spirit^ soul and body " — i Thess. v. 23. 

E have been considering in a former 
chapter some of God's marvels in 
Nature as an incentive to Praise. 
An English philosopher wrote a 
book in which, from the physical world, he proved 
to his own satisfaction that there is no God at all. 
He was quite positive about it. But before he died, 
he wrote another book in which he took it all back. 
"I forgot one fact," he said. "I forgot man ! Tak- 
ing him into account I must change the conclusion 
of my reasoning. Behind the universe of which 
man is the highest part is an intellectual, moral, and 
personal Maker. I believe in God." 

St. Paul speaks of man's nature as a trinity — 
"spirit, soul, and body" — moral, mental, physical. 

The last half-century, so distinguished for the 
marvels of our new lordship over nature's powers, 

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THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

has also brought us a message about our earliest 
physical beginning. 

It is a recent discovery that all forms of life — 
animal and vegetable alike — originate in a tiny 
speck of matter, so minute that only microscopes 
multiplying two thousand times can make it visible. 

The full-grown animal or plant is but an accumu- 
lation of these infinitesimal "cells," as they are 
called, which multiply by division. 

In the beginning, the cells that eventually develop 
into a man, an oak, an onion, or a whale are abso- 
lutely alike in appearance. 

These microscopic specks contain everything 
which determines the structure and development of 
all parts in the future animal or plant, as these will 
appear in its growth — not by a process of un- 
folding but by a continuous presiding over the 
formation of new parts, one after the other, that 
previously did not exist as such. 

The whole mystery of being is here concentrated 

at a single point — a point so infinitesimal that 

seven millions of these life-bearing specks may be 

contained within the space of a cubic millimetre — 

296 



OUR WONDERFUL SELVES 

or occupied by an ordinary pin head. The acorn 
is not the seed of the oak, it merely contains it, and 
bears about as much relation to it in size as the 
acorn does to the full-grown tree. And yet, it holds 
within it the qualities and peculiarities of untold 
generations of its kind. 

The cell is not a hollow thing, as its name im- 
plies, but a globule containing a jelly-like substance, 
which has been named "protoplasm." 

Under the most powerful microscopes and after 
treatment with chemicals (to make it visible), the 
more solid portion of the protoplasm is found to 
consist of threads forming a net-work like the 
fibres of a sponge. 

But not yet have we reached the seat of life. 
Embedded in the protoplasm is a nucleus — a dot 
within a dot — and here at last we find the agent of 
growth and development. 

It is the marvel of every thinker, philosopher, and 
scientist that where is the least matter, there is the 
most life. 

At the first step in development the cell divides 

into two parts, the two into four — eight, sixteen, 

297 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

and so on — until by division the cell has become a 
multitude, which build the body of the embryo and 
finally of the adult, the cells gradually assuming 
various forms and functions — a division of labor. 

Some go to make glands, nerves, blood; others 
to form germ-cells through which life is reproduced. 
All look alike at first, though freighted with such 
various missions — sailing with sealed orders. 

The process of the cell's division is interesting. 
The nucleus, like the cell itself, is a round speck 
of matter containing a net-work of two very differ- 
ent constituents. One is transparent and invisible 
until treated by chemicals, the other of fibres called 
"Chromatin" (because of their capacity to be stained 
by various dyes). Just as the cell is about to divide, 
these chromatin threads resolve themselves into a 
definite number of rod or loops — always a reg- 
ular number and always the same number in a given 
species. The cells of the human body have inva- 
riably sixteen of these rods; the lily has twenty. 
Again the onion has the same as man. 

Just outside the nucleus is a single granule of 

extreme minuteness, called a "Centrosome," which 

298 



OUR WONDERFUL SELVES 

seems to be the agent for the division of the cell. 
It takes the initiative, by splitting itself in two, and 
the parts diverging from each other take their places 
at opposite ends of the cell, each now a perfect 
centrosome. Around both, some of the fibres of the 
cell's net-work group themselves in star-like rays 
— called therefore "Asters." 

These radiating fibres reach out and seem to pull 
and push the rods into a straight line through the 
centre of what had been the nucleus — the mem- 
brane of which has now disappeared. 

Each rod splits lengthwise into two halves exactly 
alike. 

The entire cell next divides in two, each half 
receiving a group of the chromatin rods (which 
form themselves into a nucleus) and also one of the 
centrosomes, and the process is complete. 

Thus the body is built up. But although we have 
found the seat of life, life itself is as impenetrable 
a mystery as ever. 

Science divides the universe into two things — 

matter and force, or power. Power uses matter. 

For instance, a cell of an oak contains, as we 

299 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

have seen, all the possibilities of billions of oaks, 
but there is within it a principle that will use this 
material to build out of it the trees. A hen's egg 
is a simple cell, enormously increased in bulk by 
food matters, which are gradually appropriated to 
form the chick by this mysterious power, inappre- 
ciable to any of our senses. We call it life. It is 
not bound up in shape or substance. It is there, but 
not dependent upon either. Do we ever see it? 
I think not. We only see the dress it puts on. 
"Sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body," now 
begins to carry its full meaning. 

The physical is made up of the perishable, which 
life constantly renews. And here is the singular 
fact that as it grows and develops, the grade of life 
rises, consciousness becomes self-consciousness, and 
this in man only. 

The highest organ of the body is the brain, which 
like the rest of it is the servant of the mind or soul — 
the second part of man, according to St. Paul. 

Only since 1862 has the doctrine been overthrown 

that the human brain thinks. 

Materialists contended that our actions and tem- 

300 



OUR WONDERFUL SELVES 

peraments depend upon the way in which our brains 
are constituted, and phrenology claimed to appor- 
tion various moral qualities to different brain 
sections. This would annihilate human responsi- 
bility. 

Now we know that the brain is not the source of 
thought — if it were, then the more brain, the more 
thought. 

That the brain is a mere instrument and not the 
origin of its own functions, is capable of proof. 

To be correct we should not speak of the- brain, 
but brains, for we have two, just as we have two 
eyes and two ears. 

If they were not instruments, dominated by some 
higher power, one of these brains becoming injured, 
we should lose half our thinking powers — but no 
such thing happens. One brain can go on with the 
work, just as we can see all that there is with one 
eye, hear all sound with one ear, and thought con- 
tinues just the same. 

Disease has demonstrated this. There are certain 

parts of the brain that have to do with words. One 

part registers the words that come to us through 

301 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

the ears, a different part those we read. A third 
takes account of the words which we write, and a 
fourth of those which we speak. 

A great physician — my authority on this subject 
— was sent for by a lady in anxious excitement. 
She found that she could not read a letter which 
she had received. She tried a newspaper with the 
same result. She could talk, she could hear, but the 
words that came through her sight were gone. The 
symptoms indicated unerringly the seat of injury. 
There are persons who cannot hear words, but all 
other sounds are perfectly audible. If one side of 
the brain of a child is injured, the other side takes 
up the work and the power is restored ; but an adult 
brain is sometimes too old to be taught anew and 
remains impaired. 

When one power fails, the mind can teach an- 
other to do its work, as, for instance, the fingers 
of the blind. Helen Keller has power to enjoy 
music through the touch of her fingers, as others 
through their ears. 

These powers of the brain are not inherent, but 
acquired — taught by the mind, which is moved in 

302 



OTTB WONDERFUL SELVES 

its turn by the will. The self, the man, is behind 
his instrument, acting upon it as a violin-player 
is behind the violin. 

The instrument, if injured, gives forth sounds 
other than the player desires, or may be mute. If 
violin strings were rubbed with grease instead of 
resin, the sound would be different. So with brains 
that have sustained injury. The two brains are 
alike, except that in right-handed persons, all the 
parts that control speaking, hearing, reading, and 
writing words are in the left brain. Those of left- 
handed persons are in the right. Primitive peoples 
first talked by gestures, and we yet supplement the 
paucity of our powers of expression by motions of 
the hand. It is interesting to note that the lobe that 
supplies the power to move the hand lies very 
close to that which enables us to form words in 
speech. 

This brain, then, the mind, impelled by the con- 
scious will, teaches and uses, and through it the feet, 
hands, eyes, and the rest of the body — and so 
fatigues in the using that for a third of the time it 
has to withdraw altogether, so as to allow them to 

3°3 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

recover strength. When we dream, we are near 
waking. 

Meantime the body carries on its own powers of 
life. The heart and lungs require no rest. Undi- 
rected by mind the physical forces are practically 
untiring — persons with the St. Vitus affection 
move incessantly without fatigue. 

"That is not first which is spiritual but that which 
is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual. ,, 

The cell, in all its journeys from its source to 
nature's climax, man, is, we believe, presided over 
by its Author — "a personally conducted tour," as 
a recent writer has said — the Director and Organ- 
izer, having been represented by His agents, may 
appear only at the end of the journey. 

When a cell eventuates in a little human child, a 
point is reached where mental and moral develop- 
ment begins. 

Browning says in his "Paracelsus," 

"All tended to mankind — 
And man produced all has its end thus far, 
But in completed man begins anew 
A tendency to God." 

3°4 



OTJR WONDERFUL SELVES 

The highest part in man is his Spirit. Spirit is 
the central "I" of our being — that which we have 
been, and shall be through eternity. It is the part 
of us allied to God — the evidence of our kinship 
to Him who is our Father. There is nothing ghostly 
about it, because we cannot see spirit with our 
present eyes — and that it must be clothed with a 
body. Neither do you see the real, living, thinking 
"me," nor I you, when we meet. 

We are spirits ; we have bodies. 

St. Paul says, plainly: "There is a natural body 
and there is a spiritual body." May it not be that 
within us is the germ of "that body that shall be" ? 
May we not be weaving its character now — by 
temptation surmounted, aspiration realized, the 
faithful doing of commonplace daily duty, by loving 
ministries, by "overcoming" self, and putting God 
first? 

Chief among the faculties of the human mind are 
memory, imagination, conception, speech, knowl- 
edge, reason; but to the spirit belong the Will and 
the Affections — our most kingly powers. Mind, 
reason, is not the royal part of man. It can be 

30S 



THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

bribed to go in any direction of self-interest. A 
lawyer knows this. We want a thing to be a certain 
way, and the mind, dominated by the will, goes to 
work to prove it the right way. Seneca could write 
in praise of virtue and be as contemptible as any 
at Nero's court. Bacon's thoughts are sublime, but 
he was base, tricky, a false friend. 

The reason informed by conscience is the compass 
and points the right way; the will is the hand on 
the tiller, guiding the rudder that determines the 
course. 

It governs and directs the mind, as it is the pre- 
rogative of the mind to govern and direct the body. 

The higher in rank is responsible for the behavior 
of the lower, so on man rests personal responsibility. 

Man can always do, or not, what he chooses, 
though the will-power grows by exercise, weakens 
by disuse. 

The old riddle asks: "What is the best of all 
possessions ?" and the answer is "self-possession," 
which includes self-restraint, self-compulsion, self- 
direction. 

The God of the Bible asks of us the faith that 

306 



OUR WONDERFUL SELVES 

means trust. We are to surrender not only our 
reason but our wills to His leadership. 

At length, the dark drop-curtain of death falls 
and the play is over — but the actor lives on. 

"Behold I show you a mystery. We shall all be 
changed, in the twinkling of an eye." The real 
self, the man behind the instrument, is to receive 
a new embodiment for his life, with higher powers, 
more subtly organized, adapted to spiritual scenes, 
and safe forever in moral integrity ! 

Whether constructed from the elements of the 
old or not is of little moment. Material and imma- 
terial are so easily interchangeable. It happens 
every time that our thought employs the medium of 
speech to convey itself on waves of sound to the 
material ear and so to the immaterial thought of 
another — and thousands at once may receive the 
thought enunciated without taking from one an- 
other. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be. ,, 
The lily with its pure white petals, its grace of 
form and delicacy of perfume, is the resurrection 
body of a bulb that looks like an onion. 

The body of the risen Lord is the type. No 

307 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

ghost — He allowed His disciples to handle Him 
and see, He ate before them — but losing none of 
His former powers, He acquired new ones, passing 
through closed doors, ascending to His Father, and 
returning to earth at will. Withholding Himself 
from recognition and then revealing Himself to the 
Emmaus disciples, He vanished from their sight. 

But He returned after Calvary and the sepulchre, 
with the same memories, the same affections — 
identity unaltered. 



308 



HEAVEN 




CHAPTER XX 

HEAVEN 

LITTLE girl was told by her 
mother, very tenderly and solemnly, 
that everybody must die sometime. 
As soon as she was alone, shaking 
off the feeling of seriousness that oppressed her, she 
exclaimed defiantly, "I don't care. I know that 
/shan't!" 

That is what we all feel. Death is unnatural, 
alien. We were meant to live, and if forced to the 
admission that others must die we do not realize 
it of ourselves, any more than children do the fact 
that if they live long enough they will become 
feeble, wrinkled, and gray like the old people 
they see, who seem to them to have always been 
old. 

It is the immortal spirit's protest within us. "We 
shall not die, but live !" 

3" 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Many years ago I heard a dear old saint talk 
of Heaven to a large gathering. After the lecture 
I said to him, with the audacity of youthful conceit 
of opinion: 

"I think, sir, that you did not discriminate clearly 
between physical and spiritual death." 

"But, my dear," he replied, "there is but one 
kind of death. To the Christian there is no death 
— it is going home after school is done, from a dark 
room into a light, from warfare to victory, from the 
testing of discipline, from faults and failures, to the 
rapture and the joy of hearing God's 'Well done !' " 

Longfellow says : 

"There is no death. What seems so is transition. 
This life of mortal breath is but the suburb of the life 

Elysian — 
Whose portal we call death." 

When travelling by rail from Nice to Genoa, 
much of the road being tunnelled through the 
mountains, one suddenly emerges from the dark- 
ness into scenes of the most dazzling beauty — the 
sapphire sea at the right, the snow-capped Maritime 

Alps on the left, and between are palms and orange 

312 



HEAVEN 



groves, white villas embowered in foliage and sur- 
rounded by gardens of myriad flowers — a riot of 
color — while over all is the winter sunshine glorify- 
ing everything. 

Think of death as the moment of emergence from 
the tunnel. 

We were not meant to live fearing death. Christ 
is said to have "delivered them who through fear of 
death were all their life-time subject to bondage." 
He says, too: "Whoso liveth and believeth on Me 
shall never die," and again, "shall never see death" 
— never realize it. God's hand will be over 
our eyes, and "underneath, the everlasting 
arms." 

David speaks of fearing no evil "in the valley of 
the shadow of death" — not the reality, only the 
shadow. 

It has been well said that a shadow presupposes 
the sunshine behind it, or no shadow could be cast. 
It would be the "darkness" of death, not shadow. 

The minds of children ("kingdoms of heavenites," 
Coleridge calls them) easily accept the true view of 
the passage from mortal to immortal life. 

3i3 



THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

Two little boys paused in their play to talk of the 
recent death of a little comrade. The nurse over- 
heard one say: "Do you know what it is to be 
dead ? You are like you was asleep and they cover 
you all over with flowers. You can't speak, nor 
breathe, and you're all cold, and " 

"Huh !" interrupted the other, with contemptuous 
indignation, "that isn't it at all. Why, God sends 
you here for a little bit of a while" — and he brought 
his small forefingers almost together — "and all the 
time you are getting ready, and by and by He takes 
you to a bea-u-tiful place and there you stay" — 
stretching his arms out straight to their utmost 
strained reach — "forever-an'-ever-an'-ever, just 
growing happier and happier !" 

Among wedding gifts, I received an exquisite 
little gilt travelling clock, set with mock turquoises. 
My children had only seen it in its leather case; 
when one day, I took it down to show them, 
saying : 

"Now, suppose it was alive. Something inside 
is making its heart beat — just listen — and is mak- 
ing the hands move to do their work of telling us 

3*4 



HEAVEN 



the time." Suddenly, lifting the dainty, glittering 
thing from its leather case, which dropped to the 
floor unheeded, I said: 

"And this is death !" 

The object lesson prepared them for a little talk 
about life and death, and their first impressions were 
that death liberated the real self from the mere 
clothing of the body. 

The New Testament, when referring to the death 
of believers, always, I think, speaks of death as 
"falling asleep." I can recall ten instances when 
the expression is used. Stephen "fell asleep" 
when stoned to death. The body sleeps, "the spirit 
returns unto Him who gave it." 

The thought of exchanging the activity of 
thought, the free employment of every faculty 
for a suspension is abhorrent. We have only to 
think of a man in the full vigor of mental and physi- 
cal life, killed by an accident, to know that he must 
be somewhere. 

Sleep and awakening have always made mankind 
doubt the idea of human extinction by death. Even 
the cave-dwellers buried with their dead the weap- 

3*5 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

ons for the chase, food, and even toys for the chil- 
dren. 

Phillips Brooks said in an unpublished sermon : 
"The night takes you into its keeping to restock 
your exhaustion. And how does she do it? It 
seems a strange way — she takes out of you what 
little strength there is left and calms you into sleep 
— death's twin-brother. The apparent life is gone. 
You lift the sleeper's arm, and it falls heavy. Yet 
while the apparent life is gone, the real life is accu- 
mulating. The recuperation of powers is, by their 
temporary surrender, effected and in fuller strength 
and vigor returned, refreshed and renewed. And 
in the truest view of death, it is the same — the 
repair of the worn-out natural body into the new 
vigor of the spiritual body is accomplished only 
by the surrender of the little strength that was left 
in the poor worn-out mortality/' 

I once heard an interesting sermon in which oc- 
curred these words : "If, as is held by many, man's 
physical body was evolved through countless ages, 
from some life-bearing germs, indistinguishable 

from the dust of the ground or mysteriously inher- 

316 



HEAVEN 



ing in it — when the perfect physical man was 
attained, 'God breathed into him' — communicated 
life from Himself — 'and man became a living 
soul' — an immortal. And that was Adam — the 
first of our race. The spirit withdrawn, the body 
resolves itself into its original elements awaiting 
'that great day.' " 

"It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power" ; 
"To every seed, its own body" ; and "Death is swal- 
lowed up in victory." 

A clergyman once told me that he had seen many 
die, but he had never seen one unwilling to go. 
Dread was eliminated, either through weakness, un- 
consciousness, or exaltation. 

The experience of a noted physician confirmed 
this. A woman, believed to be on the verge of 
death, said to him : 

"Doctor — I am loath to die. Everything in me 
protests !" 

"Then I do not believe that you are going to die," 
was the reply. And she did not. 

Another physician told me that the suffering and 
struggle were not half so bad as were endured con- 

3i7 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

stantly in illnesses from which the patients recov- 
ered — and were often only apparent — the mind, 
but semi-conscious, being already partly aloof from 
its tenement. 

Have you ever seen a little child jealously hug- 
ging some toy that he refuses to part with when put 
to bed? As sleep approaches, the little arms relax, 
and the toy falls unheeded. 

Does the idea of judgment trouble you. It need 
not. To me it is a comfort that "The Father hath 
committed all judgment unto the Son." 

None but God has omniscience, and can take all 
things into consideration. None but man — one 
who has lived the human life, and knows its weak- 
ness, its temptations — can, we feel, comprehend 
us perfectly. We have both in the God-man. 

We need fear nothing, if we have committed our- 
selves in trustful faith to Him who has promised — 
"As far as the east is from the west, so far hath 
He removed our transgressions from us." 

"And their sins and iniquities will I remember 
no more !" 

Shall we be judged for sins that have been for- 

3i8 



HEAVEN 



given and forgotten ? Shall St. Peter have to blush 
again for denying his Lord ? 

No, the judgment of the redeemed must be for the 
rewards and ranks of Heaven — and, oh ! we shall 
wish that we had not been content with low aims 
and "just getting in" that day ! There will be ranks 
— the apostles are to sit upon twelve thrones, set 
over the twelve tribes of Israel. 

In the parables of the talents and the pounds, the 
earthly story is finished. In the former the rewards 
given are for personal loyalty — in the latter, for 
faithfulness to a trust. 

In Dante's "Purgatory" what is called "poetical 
justice" is meted out — the slothful are hurried 
breathlessly on their way, the gluttonous are tan- 
talized by the sight of lusciousness beyond their 
reach; so the rewards of Heaven will be no hap- 
hazard thing. Such would be contrary to all God's 
ways. 

I believe that each act of self-denial or sacrifice, 
each sweet and shining temptation overcome, each 
act of faithfulness to love and duty, will bring an 
added joy and recompense. 

319 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

We can only be fairly judged by motives. Little 
by little, motives, which are the expression of will, 
produce character. A man may kill another and be 
innocent, if it be in battle for his country — if from 
motives of private revenge, it is murder. 

We must be judged by what we are — not by 
what we do or say, not by surface goodness, not by 
our good intentions — which have been called 
"ladders that are too short" — but by our real selves, 
by what life has made us. What determined the 
choice of the engineer for the Brooklyn Bridge? 
Fitness. 

Our unconscious actions, our habitual attitude to- 
wards all things, reveal and betray our state. The 
test is very searching, but remember, we are talk- 
ing of rewards and "crowns" — not of our salva- 
tion. No personal fitness can deserve that — which 
is God's free gift, purchased by Christ, offered by 
the Holy Spirit. 

You may have heard, perhaps, the following 

story. A very great lady dreamed that she had 

passed the pearly gates, and was being piloted to 

her own especial "mansion." To her surprise, it 

320 



HEAVEN 



was extremely modest by comparison with those 
which she had passed and she turned inquiring eyes 
to her guide for explanation: 

"The architect did the best that he could, with 
the materials that you furnished, madam," was the 
reply. 

Where do we go, when the body has "fallen 
asleep" — to what shall we wing our way? 

The traditional Heaven is most unattractive. The 
paradise that men have imagined by its utter vague- 
ness fills one with dread. Splendor! Immensity! 
Grand words, grand things — a little definite happi- 
ness would be more to the purpose. I am lost in a 
dazzling mist ! 

The first necessity is that I, this individuality, 
by which I am what I am and not another here, 
shall find myself there. There is nothing so real 
to me as that I exist — it is the certainty of cer- 
tainties. 

A scientist friend tells me that living beings are 
always distinct, individual, they never mingle. A 
Mohammedan, taking up a handful of Ganges 
water once, said to him : 

321 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

"Here is man. Out of the ocean of existence he 
comes/' and, throwing back the water, he con- 
tinued : "And is absorbed into it again." 

"No," said my friend. "Even the bacillus that 
causes influenza is a distinct entity. Eighty billions 
of them may be contained on the surface of an 
ordinary pin's head — and be as distinct as the 
blades of grass on a prairie." 

How certain Job is that God preserves our per- 
sonality — "I know that my Redeemer liveth . . . 
whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes behold, 
and not another's." 

The legendary Heaven is a pale insipidity, a 
celestial mechanism. An eternal hosanna suggests 
only monotony and ennui. 

In a recent novel a child asks his friend, the 

coachman, whether he thinks there will be horses 

in Heaven, who replies : "What would I do a-play- 

in' on a 'arp more than an hour or so at a time ? 

I believe there will be 'orses for them as loves 'orses, 

only they'll all be thoroughbred and none of 'em will 

'ave any vice." 

Yes, we shall adore and glorify God, sing marvel- 

322 



HEAVEN 



lous anthems, thrill with joy and know perfect 
peace, but the glow, the ardor and enthusiasm 
within us shall seek expression in praise. It will 
be a life, not an abstraction or an absorption. It 
will be our native land, not a foreign country; the 
house of our Father, not the temple of an august 
and unknown Divinity. We shall be surrounded, 
not by throngs of phantoms, but brothers and dear 
friends. 

Henry Ward Beecher said : 

"When I portray my Heaven, I gather what 
is most resplendent on earth, from the clouds, from 
the morning and evening, from the grandeur of 
winter and the luscious luxuriance of summer. If 
God has made His footstool so beautiful, what must 
His throne be ! For its population I take whatever 
on earth is most bewitching, most genial in nature 
and society — those whom I would go farthest to 
see, who excite in me the most wonder and rap- 
ture. I get together all these treasures, and with 
them depict the nearest likeness that my poor finite 
imagination can fancy that God has planned and 
beautified and glorifies." 

3*3 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

A friend of mine, when a child, was given the 
freedom of her father's library. On the topmost 
shelf she found a very old volume, in which the 
author described a dream of Heaven : 

"Among manifold joys," he said that "all the little 
hintings of talent, for which on earth there had 
been no time, or means, or opportunity for culti- 
vation, were here finding their natural fruition, as 
flowers develop in the sunshine — with keen delight 
to their possessors. Handel was there, and having 
seen the 'Messiah/ a new inspiration had been 
kindled — and his soul's most fervent adoration had 
been poured forth in a new composition, supremely 
beautiful, on his former great theme. The great 
ones of earth, through the ages, were there, as 
approachable and cordial as one's familiar 
friends. 

"The people of our world naturally sought each 
other, from interest and sense of kinship. Those 
who had lived on earth at the same time were 
like members of a common family. ,, 

These are but man-made Heavens — but turn 
to other conceptions of immortality — for example, 

3 2 4 



HEAVEN 



to that of Mohammedanism. As one reads the 
pages upon pages of description of the Moslem 
Heaven, with its sensual delights, its houris, and its 
material details of revolting revels, a refined soul 
turns with repulsion from the picture. 

Only God's own Word can give us any real as- 
surance — anything for the heart to rest upon with 
confidence. What is the Heaven promised to the 
believer? 

The Bible does not give us explicit descriptions, 
but great truths, that tell us more in a sentence than 
pages of description could do. 

"I shall be satisfied, when I awake with Thy like- 
ness." Satisfied! That does not mean — nothing 
left to wish for! — no, that is satiety — but, per- 
fectly pleased. To have no wishes would eliminate 
the joy of their gratification. It will be the fulfilling 
of all dim thoughts and hopes, all that the heart has 
longed for. 

"In Thy presence is fulness of joy. At Thy right 
hand are pleasures for evermore." 

Ponder the words until their meaning fills and 
thrills you. 

325 



THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

"The Lord God shall wipe away tears from of? all 
faces." Shall He not know how to comfort ? "What 
I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know 
hereafter." He will condescend to explain. He 
will tell us why this or that sorrow was necessary 
for us. 

"And there shall be no more death, neither sor- 
row nor crying. Neither shall there be any more 
pain." The discipline of life will be over — no 
longer needed. Every one will be at his or her best. 
Love and joy will reign supreme. 

There will be "no night there." The night is 
for repair after fatigue. We shall not require it. 

Identity will be preserved. "It is I, myself," said 
the risen Lord to His disciples — and "He calleth 
His sheep by name." 

Memory will be preserved. Without it we should 
be strangers to ourselves. God is represented as 
saying to Dives, in our Lord's parable, "Remem- 
ber." 

Shall we know and love our dear ones of earth 

there? On the mount of glory Peter instinctively 

knew Moses and Elijah. Our Lord returning after 

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HEAVEN 



death sought first those whom He had loved in the 
earth-life. 

Shall we know anything of those whom we have 
left behind? One thing we shall surely know: 
"There is joy in Heaven over one sinner that re- 
penteth." 

Heaven is said to be not a place so much as a 
condition. 

Do true lovers, in the full rapture of their joy in 
one another, care about their surroundings? Does 
a woman, in the new ecstasy of motherhood, think 
of the furnishings of life ? There are moments here 
of such exquisite happiness that we cannot bear it 
long; it is too high, but it belongs to the Heavenly 
life. 

Revelation tells much about the future life, but 
it is difficult for us to understand, because in Ori- 
ental languages truth is taught by symbolism where 
we use imagery. We must not make pictures of 
what we read there, but interpret its meaning by 
the symbols that stand for things incapable of rep- 
resentation. To put it crudely, a man spoken of as 
having three heads would be to us a monstrosity. To 

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THE EOAD TO HAPPINESS 

an Eastern mind it would describe a man with the 
brain-power of three ordinary persons. 

The Revelation becomes intelligible and sublime, 
thus read, abhorrent sometimes if its descriptions 
are pictured. It says: "To him that overcometh, 
will I give to eat of the tree of life." Man, re- 
deemed and saved, may eat of the tree that confers 
immortality, forbidden in Eden. Sinless ! — for- 
ever safe in moral integrity, when the will shall 
respond to the highest motives and one may know 
always the joy of an approving conscience. 

"Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have 
entered into the heart of man the things which God 
hath prepared for them that love Him." 

How personal it is; how tender! Beyond our 
powers of thinking or imagining — it could not be 
made intelligible to us. Can music be described to 
one born deaf — or sunset glory to a blind man? 
Mrs. Ewing tells of a butterfly which in its previ- 
ous existence had promised a fellow worm to tell 
about the new life but found it utterly impossible. 

"Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty" — 

and He will be the Saviour who lived and suffered 

328 



HEAVEN 



here on our own earth, in our familiar human form. 
We shall not meet Him as a stranger. It will be 
"this same Jesus" who has know r n us, comforted us 
in all our tribulation, forgiven us seventy times 
seven. He will realize all our ideals — all that we 
have ever thought of as noble and pure and true, 
as sweet, grand, and glorious — and then transcend 
them more and more, as our capacity grows to 
appreciate and understand. 

Byron, in speaking of St. Peter's at Rome, says : 

* 'Enter, its grandeur overwhelms thee not; 
And why ? It is not lessened; but thy mind 
Expanded by the genius of the spot 
Has grown colossal .... 

And thou, 

Shalt one day, if found worthy— so defined, 

See thy God face to face, as thou dost now 

His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow." 

At that supreme moment, when we see Him face 
to face, I think self will be forgotten utterly in the 
rapture of that sight. 

"The miles to Heaven are few and short." There 
will be no delay. It is enough that Christ promised 
to a dying but repentant thief : 

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THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

"To-day thou shalt be with Me, in Paradise." 
We shall be with Him — all the rest will be adjusted 
to that. 

"Absent from the body, present with the Lord." 
"I go to prepare a place for you" — and it will be 
Home — 

"The home where cares and sorrows have no place, 
The home where 'fare-thee-well' is never heard; 
The home where all the ransomed — saved by God's for- 
giving grace — 
Shall safely dwell forever in the sunshine of His face!" 



THE END 



330 



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